RUSSIA  AND   THE   WORLD 


27  17 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

KKW  YORK   •    BOSTON   •    CHICAGO   •    DALLAS 
ATLANTA   •    SAN   FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON   •    BOMBAY   •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd, 

TORONTO 


At  the  Cossack  picnic :  stirring  the  cauldron  of  soup  with  birch 

branches. 


RUSSIA    AND    THE 
WORLD 

A  STUDY  OF  THE  WAR  AND  A  STATEMENT 

OF  THE   WORLD-PROBLEMS   THAT 

NOW    CONFRONT    RUSSIA 

AND  GREAT  BRITAIN 


BY 


STEPHEN    GRAHAM 

AUTHOR   OF   "WITH   POOR    IMMIGRANTS   TO   AMERICA' 

"  WITH  RUSSIAN  PILGRIMS  TO  JERUSALEM  " 

ETC. 


WITH  ILLUSTRATIONS  FROM  ORIGINAL  PHOTOGRAPHS 


THE    MACMILLAN   COMPANY 
1917 

All  rights  reserved 


Copyright,  1915, 
Bv  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  March,  1915.     Reprinted 
September,  1915;  April,  1917. 


Wortoooli  Preas 

J.  8.  Gushing  Co.  —  Berwick  <fc  Smith  Co. 

Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


G^    76. 


INTRODUCTION 

In  December,  1913,  when  I  was  just  returning  to 
Russia  after  my  tramp  in  America,  The  London  Times 
came  forward  and  put  its  columns  at  my  disposal,  and ' 
I  was  able  to  record  my  impressions  there  throughout 
the  whole  of  the  year.  During  the  winter  I  was  seeking 
words  and  stories  and  impressions  that  would  convey 
better  the  idea  of  Russia  as  the  great  religious  force 
of  Europe :  Russia  the  sanctuary  from  Westernism. 
My  first  articles  dealt  with  the  religion  of  Russia,  the 
meeting  of  old  friends,  the  idea  of  sanctuary.  I  visited 
many  old  friends  of  whom  I  have  written  in  my  books 
before  —  Pereplotchikof,  the  Russian  painter,  with 
whom  I  spent  a  summer  in  the  forests  of  Archangel; 
Loosha,  whom  I  met  at  Batum ;  Varvara  Ilinitchna, 
of  the  cottage  with  the  Chinese  wall  at  Gelendzhik,  on 
the  Black  Sea  shore;  the  old  grandmother  at  Vladi- 
kavkaz, to  whom  I  brought  a  crown  of  thorns  and  a 
cross  after  my  pilgrimage  to  Jerusalem.  My  first 
letters  home  were  from  Moscow,  Kief,  Vladikavkaz, 
and  other  towns. 

But  with  the  coming  of  spring  the  road  tempted  me, 
and  I  set  out  on  the  longest  and  most  difi5cult  tramp  I 


vi  INTRODUCTION 

had  yet  attempted  —  across  Russian  Central  Asia  to 
the  frontier  of  China  and  the  south  of  Central  Siberia. 
I  went  by  train  as  far  as  the  road  would  take  me,  and 
then  went  on  with  pack  on  back.  I  visited  Bokhara, 
Samarakand,  and  Tashkent,  those  wondrous  cities 
which  Russia  possesses  on  the  northern  side  of  Afghanis- 
tan in  the  Hindu-Koosh.  Towards  the  end  of  May  I 
set  out  across  the  Kirghiz  steppes,  through  Sindaria 
and  Seven  Rivers  Land,  and  saw  many  scores  of  new 
Russian  villages  and  irrigated  farms  in  this  the  young- 
est of  Russian  colonies.  I  was  continually  with  the 
pioneers  of  Russian  emigration  —  the  endless  caravan  of 
ox-drawn  or  pony-drawn  carts  carrying  all  the  goods 
and  families  of  Russians  going  to  the  remote  East  in 
search  of  land.  It  was  an  interesting  tramp,  but  very 
hot,  very  trying.  The  sun  beat  down  on  the  desert, 
and  for  days  there  was  never  a  tree,  not  even  a  palm 
tree,  under  which  to  shelter.  It  is  a  land  full  of  big 
game,  many  tigers,  many  panthers,  ibex,  antelope. 
There  are  many  serpents,  many  eagles  and  vultures 
and  huge  bustards.  There  are  also  myriads  of  creatures 
of  the  desert  —  tortoises,  marmottes,  dust  beetles. 

I  reached  the  posts  of  what  is  nominally  the  boundary 
line  of  Mongolia,  and  passed  through  many  Cossack 
settlements  by  Kopal,  Lepsinsk,  and  Lake  Maiman  to 
Semipalatinsk.  At  Semipalatinsk,  where,  by  the  by, 
Dostoieffsky  suffered  part  of  his  exile  to  Siberia,  I  came 
into  touch  with  civilisation,  received  a  stack  of  letters 


INTRODUCTION  vii 

and  newspapers,  among  other  things,  read  of  the  assas- 
sination of  the  Archduke  Ferdinand  and  his  bride  and 
of  the  consequent  punitive  expedition  of  the  Austrians. 
It  seemed  a  serious  matter  to  me  then,  and  I  wondered 
whether  things  might  not  be  more  interesting  to  me  if 
I  returned  to  the  more  western  parts  of  Russia,  but  I 
was  loth  to  forgo  the  prospect  of  resting  through  late 
July  and  August  in  the  Altai  —  those  magnificent  pine- 
covered  snow-crested  mountains  that  divide  Siberia 
from  China,  and  give  birth  to  those  wondrous  rivers 
of  Asia,  the  Irtish  and  the  Yenisei.  I  went  south  to 
Malo-Kranoyark,  and  then  alongside  the  main  Altai 
range  and  over  the  green  hills  up  to  the  highlands  of 
Katun  Karagai.  And  there,  whilst  living  in  a  Cossack 
station,  I  heard  the  barely  credible  intelligence  that 
there  was  war. 

No  one  could  say  with  whom  there  was  war,  but 
there  certainly  was  war  with  some  one.  It  was  a  terrible 
moment  when  I  heard  that  Germany  had  declared  war 
on  Russia,  but  it  was  tempered  by  the  fact  that  I  could 
hardly  believe  the  news  to  be  true.  Still,  with  the  call 
to  arms  my  vagabondage  in  Central  Asia  came  to  an 
end  for  the  time  being.  So  the  war  came  across  my 
little  thread  of  life. 

This  book  takes  up  my  story  on  the  day  of  mobilisa- 
tion on  the  Altai  Mountains.  At  first  I  thought  of 
including  the  whole  of  the  year's  experience  and 
thought,  and  the  impressions  of  my   Central  Asian 


viii  INTRODUCTION 

journey  in  one  book  with  my  pictures  and  thoughts 
of  the  war.  But  I  have  thought  it  better  to  put  aside 
the  earlier  matter,  as  hardly  relevant  to  the  immediate 
question  of  how  the  war  is  affecting  Russia  and  how 
Russia  stands  in  relation  to  the  nations  she  protects  and 
to  the  world  in  general.  Some  time  later  I  hope  to 
return  to  the  Altai  village  and  resume  my  wanderings 
where  I  left  off,  and  when  I  have  crossed  Siberia  may 
perhaps  present  a  personal  impression  of  the  Russian 
Empire. 

As  regards  the  spelling  of  Russian  and  Polish  names 
I  have  kept  to  the  rule  of  spelling  according  to  sound. 
This  was  followed  in  my  articles,  but  The  Times  fol- 
lowing a  tradition  preferred  to  change  my  Chenstokhof 
into  Czestochowa  and  so  on.  It  would  be  well  if  the 
press  as  a  whole  would  spell  according  to  sound  and 
Przemysl  became  simply  Pshemisl  as  it  is  pronounced, 

and  so  on. 

S.  G. 

February,  191 5. 


CONTENTS 


WAR 

CHAPTER  PACK 

I.    How  THE  News  of  War  Came  to  a  Village  on 

THE  Chinese  Frontier i 

II.    The    Journey    from    the    Altai    Mountains    to 

Moscow 9 

III.  The  Englishman 15 

IV.  In  Moscow 19 

9.  V.    Why  Russia  is  Fighting 36 

^  VI.     Is  IT  A  Last  War  ? 42 

VII.     Autumn  Leaves 47 

^VIII.     The  Economic  Isolation  of  Russia        •        •        •  53 

IX.     On  the  River  Niemen 58 

X.    An  Aeroplane  Hunt  in  Warsaw    ....  65 

XI.    The  First  Battle  of  Warsaw         ....  74 

XII.    The  Day  of  Victory 80 

XIII.  Suffering  Poland  :   A  Belgium  of  the  East        .  85 

XIV.  The  Censorship 91 

XV.    The  Soldier  and  the  Cross 95 

^'XVI.     School  Children 100 

XVII.    Trophies 105 

XVIII.    The  Evergreens  Remain no 

NATIONS 

I.    Russians 119 

II.    The  Germans .  135 


X  CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 


PAGB 


III.  The  Future  of  the  Poles i43 

IV.  The  Future  of  the  Jews IS4 

V.  Turks 170 

VI.  Americans I79 

INDIVIDUALS 

"I.  The  Great  White  Tsar 185 

II.  M.  Sazonof 192 

POLICIES 

I.  The  Vodka  Prohibition 201 

II.  Distrust  of  Russia  or  Friendship  with  Russia      .  213 

III.  The  Settlement  of  Peace 222 

IV.  Arbitration 230 

V.  The  Future  of  the  Russian  Empire  .        .        .  236 

VI.  The  Future  of  the  British  Empire  .        .        .  269 

VII.  Naturalisation 274 

VIII.  Conscription 276 

LAST   THOUGHTS 

I.  Petrograd 283 

II.  Returning  from  Russia  to  England         .        .        .  288 

III.  Not  Too  Loud 302 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


At  the  Cossack  picnic :  stirring  the  cauldron  of  soup  with  birch 

branches Frontispiece 

FACING  PAGE 

Cossack  bringing  his  fur  coat  to  the  revision  of  kit        .         .         .        4 

The  Altai  Village-church .44 

Making  the  sign  of  the  Cross  with  holy  water  on  each  Cossack's 

head.     The  priest  is  using  paint-brush  .....       92 
Carrying  the  village  ikons  to  the  Cossacks'  Consecration  Service     148 
Dancing  round  the  Rouble  :  Cossack  shows  the  Tsar's  head  on 
the  silver  coin,  while  the  others  sing  the  National  Anthem 

and  dance  round 

Hoisting  the  Ataman  at  the  mobilisation.  The  Cossacks  also 
came  to  the  author  and  said  :  '■'■  Pozvoltye  vas  raskatchat  — 

permit  us  to  give  you  a  swing  " 252 

On  the  way  to  the  point  of  mobilisation  :  1,000  miles  from  the 
nearest  railway  station  ;  4,000  miles  from  the  battlefields  of 
Poland 278 


194 


"  And  He  who  sat  upon  the  throne  said :  ''Behold^ 
I  make  all  things  new.' 


I 

WAR 


RUSSIA  AND   THE   WORLD 
I.  WAR 


How  THE  News  of  War  came  to  a  Village  on 
THE  Chinese  Frontier 

I  WAS  staying  in  an  Altai  Cossack  village  on  the 
frontier  of  Mongolia  when  the  war  broke  out,  1,200 
versts  south  of  the  Siberian  railway,  a  most  verdant 
resting-place,  with  majestic  fir  forests,  snow-crowned 
mountains  range  behind  range,  green  and  purple  val- 
leys deep  in  larkspur  and  monkshood.  All  the  young 
men  and  women  of  the  village  were  out  on  the  grassy 
hills  with  scythes;  the  children  gathered  currants  in 
the  wood  each  day,  old  folks  sat  at  home  and  sewed 
furs  together,  the  pitch-boilers  and  charcoal-burners 
worked  at  their  black  fires  with  barrels  and  scoops, 
and  athwart  it  all  came  the  message  of  war. 

At  4  A.M.  on  July  31st  the  first  telegram  came  through, 
an  order  to  mobilise  and  be  prepared  for  active  service. 
I  was  awakened  that  morning  by  an  unusual  commo- 
tion, and,  going  into  the  village  street,  saw  the  soldier 
population  collected  in  groups,  talking  excitedly.     My 


2  RUSSIA  AND   THE  WORLD 

peasant  hostess  cried  out  to  me,  "Have  you  heard  the 
news?  There  is  war."  A  young  man  on  a  fine  horse 
came  galloping  down  the  street,  a  great  red  flag  hanging 
from  his  shoulders  and  flapping  in  the  wind,  and  as  he 
went  he  called  out  the  news  to  each  and  every  one, 
"War!   War!" 

Horses  out,  uniforms,  swords  !  The  village  feldscher 
took  his  stand  outside  our  one  Government  building, 
the  volostnoe  pravlenie,  and  began  to  examine  horses. 
The  Tsar  had  called  on  the  Cossacks ;  they  gave  up 
their  work  without  a  regret  and  burned  to  fight  the 
enemy. 

Who  was  the  enemy?  Nobody  knew.  The  tele- 
gram contained  no  indications.  AU  the  village  popu- 
lation knew  was  that  the  same  telegram  had  come  as 
came  ten  years  ago,  when  they  were  called  to  fight  the 
Japanese.  Rumours  abounded.  All  the  morning  it 
was  persisted  that  the  yellow  peril  had  matured,  and 
that  the  war  was  with  China.  Russia  had  pushed  too 
far  into  Mongolia,  and  China  had  declared  war. 

The  village  priest,  who  spoke  Esperanto  and  claimed 
that  he  had  never  met  anyone  else  in  the  world  who 
spoke  the  language,  came  to  me  and  said : 

"What  think  you  of  Kaiser  Wilhelm's  picture?" 

"What  do  you  mean?"  I  asked. 

"Why,  the  yeUow  peril!" 

Then  a  rumour  went  round,  "It  is  with  England, 
with  England."     So  far  away  these  people  lived  they 


THE  NEWS   OF   WAR  3 

did  not  know  that  our  old  hostility  had  vanished. 
Only  after  four  days  did  something  like  the  truth  come 
to  us,  and  then  nobody  believed  it. 

"An  immense  war,"  said  a  peasant  to  me.  "Thir- 
teen powers  engaged  —  England,  France,  Russia,  Bel- 
gium, Bulgaria,  Servia,  Montenegro,  Albania,  against 
Germany,  Austria,  Italy,  Roumania,  Turkey." 

Two  days  after  the  first  telegram  a  second  came,  and 
this  one  called  up  every  man  between  the  ages  of  18 
and  43.  Astonishing  that  Russia  should  at  the  very 
outset  begin  to  mobilise  its  reservists  5,000  versts  from 
the  scene  of  hostilities ! 

Flying  messengers  arrived  on  horses,  breathless  and 
steaming,  and  delivered  packets  into  the  hands  of  the 
Ataman,  the  head-man  of  the  Cossacks  —  the  secret 
instructions.  Fresh  horses  were  at  once  given  them, 
and  they  were  off  again  within  five  minutes  of  their 
arrival  in  the  village.  The  great  red  flag  was  mounted 
on  an  immense  pine-pole  at  the  end  of  our  one  street, 
and  at  night  it  was  taken  down  and  a  large  red  lantern 
was  hung  in  its  place.  At  the  entrance  of  every  vil- 
lage such  a  flag  flew  by  day,  such  a  lantern  by  night. 

The  preparations  for  departure  went  on  each  day, 
and  I  spent  much  time  watching  the  village  vet.  certi- 
fying or  rejecting  mounts.  A  horse  that  could  not  go 
fifty  miles  a  day  was  not  passed.  Each  Cossack 
brought  his  horse  up,  plucked  its  lips  apart  to  show 
the    teeth,    explained    marks    on    the    horse's    body, 


i/i 


4  RUSSIA  AND   THE  WORLD 

mounted  it  bareback  and  showed  its  paces.  The 
examination  was  strict ;  the  Cossacks  had  a  thousand 
miles  to  go  to  get  to  the  railway  at  Omsk.  It  was 
necessary  to  have  strong  horses. 

On  the  Saturday  night  there  was  a  melancholy 
service  in  the  wooden  village  church.  The  priest,  in 
a  long  sermon,  looked  back  over  the  history  of  Holy 
Russia,  dwelling  chiefly  on  the  occasion  when  Napoleon 
defiled  the  churches  of  "Old  Mother  Moscow,"  and  was 
punished  by  God.  "  God  is  with  us,"  said  the  priest. 
"Victory  will  be  ours." 

Sunday  was  a  hoUday,  and  no  preparations  were 
made  that  day.  On  Monday  the  examination  of 
horses  went  on.  The  Cossacks  brought  also  their 
uniforms,  swords,  hats,  half-shubas,  overcoats,  shirts, 
boots,  belts  —  all  that  they  were  supposed  to  provide 
in  the  way  of  kit,  and  the  Ataman  checked  and  certified 
each  soldier's  portion. 

On  Thursday,  the  day  of  setting  out,  there  came  a 
third  telegram  from  St.  Petersburg.  The  vodka-shop, 
which  had  been  locked  and  sealed  during  the  great 
temperance  struggle  which  had  been  in  progress  in 
Russia,  might  be  opened  for  one  day  only  —  the  day 
of  mobilisation.  After  that  day,  however,  it  was  to 
be  closed  again  and  remain  closed  until  further  orders. 

What  scenes  there  were  that  day ! 

All  the  men  of  the  village  had  become  soldiers  and 
pranced  on  their  horses.     At  eight  o'clock  in  the  morn- 


THE  NEWS   OF  WAR  5 

jng  the  holy-water  basin  was  taken  from  the  church 
and  placed  with  triple  candles  on  the  open,  sun-blazed 
mountain  side.  The  Cossacks  met  there  as  at  a  ren- 
dezvous, and  all  their  women-folk,  in  multifarious 
bright  cotton  dresses  and  tear-stained  faces,  walked 
out  to  say  a  last  rehgious  good-bye. 

The  bare-headed,  long-haired  priest  came  out  in  vest- 
ment of  violent  blue,  and  behind  him  came  the  old  men 
of  the  village  carrying  the  ikons  and  banners  of  the 
church;  after  them  the  village  choir,  singing  as  they 
marched.  A  strange  minghng  of  sobbing  and  singing 
went  up  to  heaven  from  the  crowd  outside  the  wooden 
village,  this  vast  irregular  collection  of  women  on  foot 
clustered  about  a  long  double  line  of  stalwart  horsemen. 

The  consecration  service  took  place,  and  only  then 
did  we  learn  the  almost  incredible  fact  that  the  war  was 
with  Germany.  It  made  the  hour  and  the  act  and  the 
place  even  more  poignant.  I  at  least  understood  what 
it  meant  to  go  to  war  against  Germany,  and  the  destiny 
that  was  in  store.  h  A'^ 

"God  is  with  you,"  said  the  priest  in  his  sermon,  J^ 
the  tears  running  down  his  face  the  while.  f"God  is 
with  you ;  not  a  hair  of  your  heads  will  be  lost.  Never 
turn  your  backs  on  the  foe.  Remember  that  if  you  do 
you  endanger  the  eternal  welfare  of  your  souls,  y**^  Re- 
member, too,  that  a  letter,  a  post  card  —  one  line  — 
will  be  greedily  read  by  all  of  us  who  remain  behind. 
.  .  .     God  bless  his  faithful  slaves!" 


6  RUSSIA  AND   THE   WORLD 

When  the  lesson  was  read  there  was  a  great  scramble 
among  the  soldiers  to  get  their  heads  underneath  the 
Bible.  They  looked  true  "slaves  of  God,"  these  sol- 
diers on  their  knees  in  the  blazing  sunlight,  the  great 
Bible  on  their  very  heads. 

Each  soldier  dismounted  and  prostrated  himself  in 
the  prayers ;  each  soldier  at  the  last  kissed  the  cross  in 
the  priest's  hand,  and  was  anointed  on  the  brow  with 
holy  water. 

And  when  anointed  he  passed  away  from  the  priest, 
leading  his  horse  by  the  bridle.  He  sought  out  mother 
and  wife  in  the  waiting  throng,  embraced  them,  and 
was  blessed  amidst  sobbings  that  wrung  the  heart. 

"They'll  be  back  soon !"  says  one  woman. 

"Oh  you  don't  know,  you  don't  know,"  repUes  an- 
other in  distraction. 

Away !  Away !  Two  miles  from  the  village  an  ox 
had  been  killed  and  was  being  cooked  by  the  side  of 
the  road,  and  gallon  bottles  of  vodka  waited  in  the 
grass.  The  soldiers  got  into  saddle  again  and  rode  out 
through  the  crowds  of  women,  old  men,  and  children. 
And  a  great  number  followed  them  to  the  place  of 
picnic. 

The  ox  was  cooked  over  a  great  fire  by  the  river- 
side, the  green  birches  withering  in  the  smoke.  The 
Cossacks  came  up  quickly,  and  getting  down  from  their 
horses  tied  them  to  the  trees.  Buckets  and  kettles  and 
glasses  were  brought  forth  from  a  shed,  also  many 


THE   NEWS   OF  WAR  7 

plates,  but  no  tables.  There  was  soup  and  roast  beef 
and  vodka  for  all  comers.  First  of  all  the  gallon  bottles 
of  spirit  were  emptied  into  the  buckets  and  kettles  and 
distributed  among  the  men,  the  men  themselves  officiat- 
ing. There  were  drinks  all  round,  and  healths  to  the 
Tsar,  and  to  Russia,  and  to  themselves.  Whilst  the 
vodka  was  being  thus  purveyed  cauldrons  were  receiv- 
ing attention,  and  directly  the  toasts  were  drunk  the 
soup  was  dealt  out,  each  man  holding  his  plate  as  he 
stood  and  putting  his  lips  to  the  hot  liquid,  blowing  it, 
and  trying  to  drink  it ;  there  were  no  spoons.  Meat 
was  carved  and  taken  promiscuously  to  eat,  and  then 
the  vodka  was  finished.  Only  a  very  limited  quantity 
had  been  supplied,  but  enough  to  inflame  the  emotion- 
alised souls  of  men  so  lately  taken  through  a  moving 
rehgious  ceremony,  so  lately  touched  to  tears  by  the 
farewell  to  home. 

One  man  held  up  a  rouble,  showing  the  Emperor's 
face,  and  all  the  soldiers  sang  "God  Save  the  Tsar," 
and  then  danced  round  the  coin. 

The  Ataman  was  taken,  hoisted  shoulder-high,  and 
thrown  three  times  into  the  air,  and  caught  again  with 
cheers  —  a  great,  stout,  bearded  military  official.  A 
number  of  soldiers  even  came  up  to  me  and  laid  their 
hands  on  me,  saying,  —  "  PozvoUye  Vas  raskatchat  — 
Let's  give  you  a  swing." 

I  had  difficulty  in  getting  away. 


8  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

The  roaring  little  river  rushed  along  under  the  birch 
trees,  the  horses  waited  in  the  green  shade,  the  men 
danced  and  sang,  the  women  sobbed  and  keened. 
There  was  an  hour  of  it,  and  then  the  officer  in 
command  gave  the  word,  and  all  the  men  were  in  the 
stirrup  again.  The  long  journey  and  farewell  began 
in  earnest.  Even  so,  women  on  horseback  accom- 
panied their  husbands  twenty  or  thirty  miles  and 
then  said  good-bye,  and  even  watched  them  out  of 
sight  as  they  dipped  with  their  dust  into  the  horizon. 

So  Russia  sent  off  her  men  from  the  frontier  of 
MongoHa  to  fight  on  the  far-off  plains  of  Austria  and 
Poland. 


II 

The   Journey    from    the    Altai    Mountains    to 

Moscow 

The  day  after  the  setting  out  of  the  Cossacks  from 
their  Altai  village  on  the  Mongolian  frontier  I  decided 
to  follow  —  hiring  first  the  post  and  then  the  zemsky 
horses.  It  was  like  following  a  reaping.  Wherever  I 
went  all  the  ablebodied  men  had  gone  before  me ;  there 
were  only  old  men,  women  and  children  remaining. 
Boys  of  twelve  and  thirteen  were  in  charge  of  the 
Government  horses,  women  who  could  neither  read 
nor  write  had  charge  of  the  post-stations.  Greybeards 
worked  with  girls  in  the  haymaking  fields.  Outside 
every  village  hung  by  day  the  red  flag  of  war ;  every 
night,  a  great  red  lantern  with  baleful  fight. 

A  fine  journey  along  the  corridors  of  the  Altai  ranges, 
from  settlement  to  settlement,  through  prairie  grass,  a 
warm  wind  blowing  all  the  day,  a  golden  moon  coming 
up  out  of  China  to  rule  in  the  night.  The  heart 
trembled  at  the  thought  of  war,  but  all  around  was  the . 
indifferent  peace  of  a  remote  country.  It  was  tanta- 
lising to  look  at  this  glowing  Altai  moon,  so  placid  and 
perfect,  and  to  feel  that  four  thousand  miles  away  the 

9 


lo  RUSSIA   AND   THE  WORLD 

destinies  of  Europe  were  being  settled  on  the  field  of 
battle. 

How  slow  was  my  progess.  After  four  days  I  got 
on  a  river  steamer,  packed  with  reservists,  and  started 
the  long  river  journey  down  the  Irtish  to  Semipalatinsk 
and  Omsk.  The  cabins  of  the  boat  were  occupied  by 
officers,  the  deck  by  the  soldiers,  and  civil  passengers 
of  whatever  description  were  put  in  the  holds  with  the 
cargo,  the  men  fore,  the  women  aft.  Doctors,  peasants, 
engineers,  fishermen.  Civil  Servants,  farmers,  found 
themselves  cheek  by  cheek  and  knee  by  knee,  trying 
to  sleep  on  sacks  of  rye  and  trusses  of  hay.  But  there 
was  no  grumbling;  everyone  understood  that  it  was 
"soldiers  first." 

We  stayed  all  night  at  Ust-Kamenygorsk.  There 
was  a  hurricane  of  wind  and  drenching  rain.  No  one 
on  board  the  ship  slept,  but  all  sat  and  looked  serious, 
while  soldiers  stood  about  in  their  cloaks,  and  the  pale 
lights  of  the  ships  shimmered  on  black  bayonets.  Next 
morning  we  were  played  off  by  a  military  band.  There 
was  a  crowd  as  if  the  whole  female  population  of  the 
town  had  come  out  to  see  us  off ;  and  as  the  National 
Anthem  was  played  the  sobs  of  mothers  and  wives 
mingled  in  unison  with  the  music  as  we  beat  the  water 
into  foam  and  steamed  away. 

All  the  way  to  Semipalatinsk  the  women  came  out 
from  the  villages  and  lined  the  riverside  to  see  us  —  not 
to  sell  things,  as  in  time  of  peace,  but  to  give.    We 


JOURNEY   FROM   ALTAI   TO   MOSCOW     ii 

stopped  nowhere,  but  came  gently  alongside  the  village 
landing-places ;  and  as  we  did  so  the  women  flung 
aboard  their  gifts  to  the  soldiers  —  5  lb.  loaves,  cucum- 
bers, red  melons,  cooked  fish  —  crying  and  shouting 
the  while.  Many  loaves  and  fishes  had  adventurous 
passages  in  their  flight  from  the  shore  to  the  boat. 
How  good  that  this  personal  sort  of  charity  is  still 
deep  in  Russia,  not  dried  up !  In  the  old  days  when 
the  Siberian  prisoners  were  marched  from  village  to 
village  to  the  mines  the  population  of  the  villages  used 
to  turn  out  and  befriend  them  in  just  such  a  way.  To- 
day in  Moscow  I  see  how  the  people  of  the  towns  wait 
at  the  stations  for  the  ambulance-  trains  and  carry  their 
gifts  to  the  captive  and  wounded  —  personally.  Even 
to  the  German  prisoners  of  war. 

There  was  a  great  deal  of  feasting  and  merriment 
on  board  the  boat,  though  no  vodka  or  beer.  The 
stove  in  the  general  kitchen  was  always  covered  with 
pots,  and  in  the  pots  were  fish,  eggs,  chickens,  mutton. 
There  was  eating  and  talking,  and  music  and  dancing. 
When  at  Semipalatinsk  we  were  transferred  to  the 
much  larger  steamer  Andrew  the  First-Called,  there  was 
dancing  all  night. 

On  the  deck  of  Andrew  the  First-Called  we  had  a 
thousand  passengers,  half  of  whom  were  reservists,  the 
other  half  a  medley  of  delayed  Siberian  passengers : 
Chinamen  on  the  way  to  Peking,  Chinese  Tartars, 
Siberian  Tartars,  gangs  of  labourers,  colonists,  school- 


12  RUSSIA  AND   THE  WORLD 

teachers  going  home  from  their  holiday  in  the  Altai, 
students  going  to  the  universities,  a  party  of  Caucasian 
pioneers  returning  to  Alagir,  near  Vladikavkaz;  five 
Ossetine  tribesmen,  who,  strange  to  say,  had  been  in 
Canada  and  who  spoke  broken  English,  and  were  of 
opinion  that  Siberia  was  "no  good  country"  ;  a  family 
of  Ziriani  going  back  to  their  home  on  the  Petchora. 
In  every  corner  and  on  every  table  roUed  canteloupes 
and  mushmelons,  giving  colours  of  gold  and  emerald  to 
the  monotony  of  Siberian  rags.  We  were  a  long-haired, 
non-shaven  lot  of  people.  I  myself  had  a  month's  hair 
on  my  face.  We  were  in  bark  boots,  in  jackboots,  in 
bare  and  dirty  feet.  We  had  many  "hares"  on  board 
—  ticketless  passengers,  tramps,  tatterdemahons,  men 
of  the  runaway  convict  type,  beggars,  thieves. 

I  lay  in  the  midst  of  them  all  and  slept  not.  An 
orchestra  was  formed  of  two  men  with  concertinas, 
three  with  fiddles,  and  one  with  a  mouth  organ,  and 
even  at  three  in  the  morning  the  musicians  were 
surrounded  by  a  great  crowd  of  men ;  some  on  sacks, 
some  standing  on  benches  and  tables,  some  hanging 
on  from  rafters  in  the  roof  above,  cheering,  shouting, 
singing,  as  men  couples  went  through  the  extraordinary 
dumb  show  of  the  popular  dances,  coming  towards  one 
another  or  retiring,  averting  their  faces,  shrugging 
their  shoulders,  hunching  their  backs,  slipping  down, 
and  dancing  as  it  were  on  hips  and  heels,  springing  up 
again,  kissing  one  another  on  the  lips. 


JOURNEY   FROM   ALTAI  TO  MOSCOW     13 

Besides  myself  there  was  another  EngHshman  on 
board,  a  mining  expert  who  had  come  down  from 
one  of  the  mines  which  used  to  be  worked  by  the 
convicts,  but  which  a  British  company  is  now  exploit- 
ing. Five  hundred  of  his  labourers  had  been  taken 
away  for  the  war ;  the  mines  would  perhaps  have  to 
close  down.  The  company's  stock  must  have  depre- 
ciated 50  per  cent.  It  was  the  same  with  all  the  other 
mining  concerns.  The  Englishman,  however,  was 
cheerful.  Optimism  had  always  carried  him  through. 
He  was  still  an  optimist.  By  the  time  we  got  to  Omsk 
it  would  be  arbitration.  "Arbitration,"  said  he, 
"that's  what  it  will  be."  A  Russian  officer,  over- 
hearing our  talk  and  learning  that  we  were  English, 
lifted  his  hat  to  us. 

What  animation  there  was  at  Omsk ;  soldiers  gallop- 
ing about  or  leading  horses  to  and  from  the  river,  great 
companies  of  reservists  in  rags,  free  dining-places  for 
reservists'  families,  companies  of  soldiers  in  new  attire 
and  with  new  rifles,  squads  of  men  drilling  on  the  sands, 
train  after  train  packed  with  soldiers,  all  the  red  Sibe- 
rian goods  trucks  emptied  of  the  merchandise  of  peace, 
and  full  of  guns,  saddles,  oats,  hay ;  laden  with  military 
carts  and  wagons,  with  soldiers  and  horses ! 

I  was  appreciably  nearer  the  war,  but  still  far  away. 
The  railway  line  was  blocked  for  passenger  service, 
and  it  was  only  in  the  slowest,  slowest  manner  that  I 
made  the  2,000-mile  journey  west  to  Moscow,  passing 


14  RUSSIA  AND   THE   WORLD 

through  the  endless  forests  of  Tobolsk,  Perm,  Viatka, 
Kostroma,  Vologda,  tasting  the  sodden  stillness  of  the 
pine  woods,  picking  up  little  contingents  of  reservists 
at  village  stations,  listening  to  the  sobbing  of  women 
saying  "good-bye,"  watching  military  goods  trains  go 
past  us,  waiting  hours,  waiting  whole  nights  to  go  on, 
the  only  diversion  the  telegrams  for  sale  at  the  railway 
stations,  the  news  of  the  doings  of  the  armies. 


m 

The  Englishman 

I  MET  the  Englishman  at  Semipalatinsk,  the  miserable 
sandswept  Siberian  town  where,  for  many  years,  Dos- 
toieffsky  was  confined.  I  was  wandering  from  the 
quay  up  to  the  town  hoping  to  get  a  current  news- 
paper to  read,  when  suddenly,  to  my  surprise,  a  man 
in  a  cart  cried  out  to  me  in  my  own  tongue,  the  words : 
"Speak  English?" 

"Why,  yes,"  said  I.     "How  did  you  guess?" 

"  I  saw  you  reading  an  old  copy  of  The  Times  yester- 
day, but  I  thought  probably  you  didn't  know  much 
and  it  wouldn't  be  worth  while  speaking  to  you." 

"You  were  on  the  Mongol?  ^^ 

"Yes,  I  got  in  at  Ust-Kamennigorsk  coming  down 
from  a  mine."  ^ 

"I  suppose  you  know  the  news,  England  has  de- 
clared war  also." 

"What!    Is  she  at  it?" 

"Yes,  it's  England,  France  and  Russia  against  Ger- 
many and  Austria." 

"No?    But  it  won't  last." 

"There's  no  going  home  across  Germany." 

IS 


i6  RUSSIA  AND   THE  WORLD 

"No?" 

"I  don't  suppose  there's  any  sailing  from  Baltic 
ports." 

"No.    But  it  can't  last.     It'll  be  arbitration." 

The  mining  engineer  seemed  perturbed.  I  went  on 
to  the  town,  he  returned  to  the  boat  after  a  night  in  a 
hotel.  We  met  later  on  Andrew  the  First-Called  and 
we  had  many  talks.  A  very  able  man  of  middle  years, 
at  once  prosaic  and  sentimental,  having  soft  blue  eyes 
ready  to  shed  tears,  faded  hair  and  heavyish  body. 
He  was  homesick  for  England,  and  talked  ever  of  his 
wife  and  his  little  girl  living  in  a  cosy  home  in  one  of 
our  western  seaports. 

"  Falmouth  is  a  fine  town  with  ships  in  the  bay 
And  I  wish  from  my  heart  it  was  there  I  was  to-day. 
I  wish  from  my  heart  I  was  far  away  from  here 
Sitting  in  my  parlour  and  talking  to  my  dear." 

Yet  the  stirring  scenes  of  the  Russian  mobilisation 
and  the  sobbing  of  the  women  touched  him,  and  he 
told  me  that  up  country  he  had  seen  sights  no  man 
could  face  unmoved. 

His  first  feeling  about  the  war  and  England's  part  in 
it  was  irritation,  but  as  I  read  him  extracts  from  the 
sheafs  of  Government  telegrams  I  had  procured  at 
Semipalatinsk  Town  Hall,  he  was  moved  with  the 
spirit  of  adventure,  and  he  told  me  of  many  things 
that  had  happened  to  him  whilst  prospecting  in  Nigeria 
and  Ashanti;   how  he  discovered  a  cliff  of  anthracite 


THE  ENGLISHMAN  17 

and  wanted  to  take  up  an  option  on  the  working  of  it 
but  the  Government  forestalled  him ;  how  he  was  once 
reported  dead,  and  came  home  to  read  his  obituary 
notice  and  find  his  wife  in  black. 

He  held  that  the  Russian  Empire  was  stronger  than 
the  British  Empire  because  of  the  lack  of  education  in 
Russia.  Education  always  made  for  disintegration. 
The  educated  man  nearly  always  wanted  to  sacrifice 
something  else  to  himself  and  his  own  education.  He 
was  not  ready  to  make  sacrifices  for  a  larger  ideal. 

But  the  engineer  believed  in  the  English,  especially 
in  contrast  with  Americans.  The  Americans  always 
think  they  can  outdo  other  people  in  the  rest  of  the 
world  by  hustling.  He  told  me  how  up  at  the  mine 
there  were  two  Americans  who  tried  "to  get  a  move 
on  the  labourers"  by  showing  an  example  and  taking 
pick  and  shovel  themselves. 

"The  men  all  stood  round  and  laughed  and  let  the 
Americans  work.  No,  the  way  to  get  Kirghiz  and 
Russians  to  work  is  to  make  a  game  of  it,  and  knock  a 
man's  hat  off  now  and  then  and  joke  about  it." 

A  cheerful,  optimistic  Briton.  Once  he  lost  £12,000 
on  an  investment  in  American  rails  and  he  felt  very 
down  in  spirits. 

"I  might  have  saved  £8,500  by  selling  out  when  I 
wanted  to,  but  my  broker  said  'Hold  on  till  morning 
and  you'll  double.'  Next  morning  I  was  broke.  I  did 
not  let  my  wife  know.    I  went  about  London  all  day 


u 


i8  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

miserable.  I  always  occupy  the  same  room  at  the 
'Cecil.'  In  the  evening  I  went  along  to  the  Gaiety 
Theatre.  I  sat  in  the  stalls  and  stared  at  the  piece  but 
couldn't  take  it  in,  I  was  so  upset  by  the  money  I'd 
lost.  After  the  show  I  met  an  old  acquaintance  who 
asked  me  into  Romano's  for  supper.  There  by  chance 
1  met  Edmund  Payne,  Gertie  Millar,  her  husband  and 
some  others.  Gertie  Millar  asked  me  how  I  liked  the 
piece.  I  replied  that  it  seemed  pretty  good,  but  my 
mind  was  wandering  all  the  time. 

"'Why,  what's  the  matter?'  said  she,  and  she  looked 
at  me  so  kindly  and  seriously  I  could  see  she  under- 
stood, and  she  put  her  hand  on  my  knee  and  said  words 
that  I  shall  never  forget :  — 

"  '  Laugh  and  the  world  laughs  with  you, 
Weep  and  you  weep  alone.' 

"Next  day  I  won  £1,500  back  on  a  thousand  pound 
margin  on  Ashantis. 

"So  I  say  it'll  be  arbitration.  I  shall  get  home  from 
St.  Petersburg  in  three  days,  through  the  Kiel  Canal. 
Have  you  ever  seen  the  canal?  No?  You  ought  to. 
I've  only  seen  it  once  and  that  was  at  night.  But  I 
stayed  up  all  night  lookmg  at  it.  It's  a  magnificent 
piece  of  engineering." 


IV 

IN  MOSCOW 

There  is  one  characteristic  in  the  life  of  a  yoimg 
man ;  it  is  that  no  matter  what  happens,  good  results 
to  him  thereby.  Luck,  so  called,  is  much  more  on 
the  side  of  the  young  man  than  on  the  side  of  the  old. 
What  hair-breadth  escapes  he  has,  what  calamities  he 
faces,  what  hardships  he  undergoes.  Yet  he  emerges 
more  powerful,  more  experienced.  Indeed,  danger  and 
privation  are  more  beneficial  to  him  than  peace  and 
happiness.  Russia  is  for  the  moment  our  young  man, 
with  all  his  destiny  before  him.  He  has  come  through 
the  Japanese  War,  the  great  revolutionary  danger,  he 
is  now  in  the  depths  of  his  third  and  greatest  struggle. 
All  goes  to  the  making  of  mighty  Russia. 

So,  when  I  got  back  tQ  Moscow  in  September,  1914, 
I  found  no  depression  of  the  national  spirit  in  Russia ; 
no  strikes,  no  riots,'  no  revolutionary  propaganda  or 
pessimism,  but  instead  an  all-pervading  cheerfulness  , 
and  national  unanimity  which  even  the  most  optimistic  J 
could  not  have  foreseen.  The  peasants  go  to  the  front 
with  great  enthusiasm ;  and  the  intelligentsia,  Radical 
and  Conservative  alike,  cheer  them  on.    The  news- 

19 


RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

papers  of  all  parties  are  at  one,  and  the  Liberal  organs 
are  as  loyal  as  those  of  the  extreme  Right.  There  is 
the  same  unanimity  among  the  Poles  and  the  Jews  — 
Jewish  volunteer  regiments  have  even  been  formed. 
The  only  sympathy  with  Germany  lies  in  the  breasts 
of  the  Finns ;  the  only  instinct  to  fall  into  brigandage 
and  rebellion  is  among  the  Mohammedan  tribesmen 
of  the  Caucasus.  All  is  well,  and  if  success  crowns 
the  Russian  arms,  the  empire  will  become  bound  in 
happy  allegiance,  to  the  Tsar  as  never  before.  On  the 
other  hand,  if  the  Germans  gain  the  upper  hand,  and 
inflict  vast  slaughter,  the  presence  of  millions  of  armed 
Russians  in  Western  Russia  is  pregnant  with  danger 
for  all  who  have  property  and  culture  and  position 
there.  This  war  is  a  matter  of  hfe  and  death  for 
Russian  civiHsation,  as  it  is  for  all  the  other  States 
engaged. 

The  air  is  full  of  hope.  All  vodka  shops  have  been 
closed,  and  Russia  at  a  word  from  the  Tsar  has  taken 
on  the  appearance  of  sobriety.  It  has  been  impossible 
to  obtain  alcoholic  liquors  of  any  kind,  and  as  a  con- 
sequence drunkenness  has  disappeared  from  the  streets, 
and  with  it  a  great  army  of  beggars  who  only  beg  that 
they  may  gather  twenty  kopeks  for  a  bottle.  The 
absence  of  vodka  made  a  great  blank  in  the  peasants' 
lives,  but  that  blank  has  been  filled  up  by  the  war  and 
the  interest  of  the  war.  Ordinarily  the  peasants  feel 
they  have  nothing  to  do  but  drink,  but  now  it  is  other- 


IN  MOSCOW  21 

wise.  It  is  as  if  in  war  they  found  a  real  reason  for 
existence,  as  if  in  death  they  found  the  object  of  living. 
It  is  difficult  to  reconcile  war  with  our  Western  Chris- 
tianity, but  the  Church  of  Russia  finds  no  difficulty  — 
going  to  the  war  is  laying  one's  body  on  the  altar  of 
sacrifice.  In  the  fine  rage  of  the  Russian  soldiers 
going  to  meet  the  foe  lies  the  thrill  of  exultation  in  the 
souls  of  martyrs  going  to  glorious  death. 

My  ears  ache  with  the  sound  of  women's  sobs.  All 
the  way  from  the  peaceful  and  happy  villages  of  the 
Altai  the  sounds  of  wailing  and  crying  broke  upon  my 
ears.  Here,  however,  in  Moscow  it  is  different :  some- 
one has  wiped  away  their  tears,  and  the  women  with 
sunshiny,  if  tear-stained,  faces,  are  feverishly  working 
for  the  thousands  of  wounded  who  have  come  back  for 
their  care,  cutting  Hnen  and  sewing  bandages,  collect- 
ing money,  organising  hospitals.  There  are  many 
wounded  in  Moscow.  All  the  pubhc  hospitals  and 
infirmaries  are  filled,  all  the  private  hospitals.  Scores 
of  large  private  houses,  such  as  that  of  Prince  Gagarin 
on  the  Novinsky  Boulevard  and  Mme.  Morozof's,  on 
the  Vozdvizhenka,  are  turned  into  lazaretti  —  honey- 
combs of  nursing  chambers  and  beds;  or  into  Knen 
warehouses  or  workshops  for  bandage  cutting  and 
rolling.  The  streets  are  thronged  with  Red  Cross 
sisters ;  in  every  house  women  are  thinking  what  they 
can  do  personally  for  the  wounded,  how  many  they  can 
take  to  nurse.    Alas  !  we  are  only  at  the  beginning  of 


22  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

sorrow.    Even  all  the  care  and  thought  of  those  at 
home  will  be  little  to  meet  the  suffering. 

Love  for  the  soldiers  is  hysterical.  At  the  railway 
stations  where  the  wounded  arrive,  wait  large  crowds 
of  women  with  baskets  of  gifts;  and  when  the  huge 
cross-marked,  comfortable  ambulance  train  comes  in 
and  stops,  there  is  a  new  and  sweet  invasion  —  all  the 
girls  running  along  the  corridors  with  cigarettes,  with 
tea  and  sugar,  and  cakes  and  newspapers. 

Even  on  wet  evenings  the  dense,  uncomplaining 
crowd  waits  for  the  wounded  and  the  prisoners,  and, 
as  the  great  red  cross  of  the  slowly  approaching  am- 
bulance train  looms  through  the  darkness  you  may  hear 
sad  whispered  exclamations  among  the  crowd  —  "Lord! 
Lord!'' 

Even  the  German  wounded  participate  in  the  general 
hospitality,  and  you  frequently  hear  a  Russian  woman 
say  of  the  wounded  enemy  before  her,  ''Poor  one;  is 
it  his  fault  that  he  is  fighting  us?"  The  Germans,  for 
their  part,  are  very  suspicious,  asking  of  the  tea,  "Is 
it  not  vitriol?"  refusing  to  take  medicine,  and  asking 
"When  are  we  to  be  hung?" 

The  streets  of  the  city  present  many  sights  —  the 
marching  of  soldiers,  the  endless  stream  of  the  army 
moving  out  of  the  depths  of  Russia  to  the  war ;  a  mag- 
nificent peasantry,  brought  in  some  cases  from  the 
remotest  places  of  the  Old  World.  They  sing  as  they 
march,  they  hft  their  hats  and  shout  as  they  go,  cheer- 


IN   MOSCOW  23 

ing  for  the  war.  In  the  midst  of  their  number  are  many 
peasant  women,  wives  who  refuse  to  be  parted  from 
their  husbands,  and  they  help  to  carry  the  immense 
baggage. 

As  a  contrast,  there  are  long  processions  of  German 
and  Austrian  prisoners,  looking  very  sulky  and  tired ; 
men  in  battered  helmets,  rent  clothes,  cavalrymen  with- 
out horses,  foot-soldiers  with  the  dust  and  blood  of 
the  battlefield  unremoved.  Russians  guard  them  with 
drawn  swords  on  their  shoulders,  the  populace  runs 
alongside  and  laughs  and  criticises.  "  What  small  men ! 
Wilhelm  promised  they  should  come  to  Moscow,  and 
they've  come!" 

No  malice,  however,  seems  to  be  borne  the  prisoners. 
On  the  contrary,  they  are  shown  a  great  deal  of  kind- 
ness. Sausage  is  provided  for  them  and  German  news- 
papers. Many  people  ask,  "Is  it  not  dull  for  you 
here?"  "Not  so  dull  if  only  there  were  beer,"  is  the 
reply. 

Or,  as  upon  the  festival  of  Dmitri  Donskoi,  there 
come  men  with  horns,  men  with  bells  and  with  gongs, 
making  a  great  din,  and  criers  shouting,  and  pantech- 
nicon vans  attended  by  society  ladies,  merchants'  wives, 
and  pretty  actresses.  Into  these  vans  you  throw  what- 
ever you  fancy,  promiscuously.  Bright  girls  come  into 
your  lodgings  and  you  give  them  all  the  old  clothes 
you  don't  want,  or  the  new  warm  things  you  have  pre- 
pared for  the  occasion  and  they  take  them  and  throw 


24  RUSSIA   AND   THE  WORLD 

them  into  the  vans ;  people  just  coming  out  of  shops 
with  parcels  in  their  hands  throw  the  parcels  into  the 
vans  on  the  impulse.  The  vans  go  to  the  richest  and 
to  the  poorest  streets.  From  the  poorest  they  take 
even  rags  and  tatters ;  all  can  be  put  to  use  in  the  ser- 
vice of  the  soldiers  who,  perchance,  have  to  go  through 
a  cold  winter  in  the  trenches. 

There  are  frequent  hurrahs  on  the  streets  as  motor- 
cars tear  past  with  wounded  men  being  taken  to  the 
hospitals.  Outside  all  the  places  to  which  for  the  time 
being  wounded  are  being  carried  there  are  crowds  wait- 
ing. When  the  cars  stop  at  the  hospital  door  there  is 
a  chorus  of  cheers  and  exclamations:  Bravo!  Molotsi! 
(fine  fellows).  Spasebo!  (thanks) ;  and  the  soldiers 
answer,  "Cheer  up,  we're  winning!" 

I  visit  Pereplotchikof  and  find  him  looking  much 
older,  as  if  the  autumn  of  life  had  breathed  over  the 
summer  of  his  prime.  But  he  is  very  active,  and  has 
a  dozen  war  notebooks  in  his  pocket.  He  spent  the 
summer  quietly  in  a  village  on  the  Northern  Dwina, 
and  when  the  war  broke  out  returned  directly  to  Mos- 
cow. He  saw  the  Tsar,  as  also  did  my  LiavHa  friend, 
Alexey  Sergeitch,*  but  now  a  Liberal  tutor  in  a  prince's 
house.  The  unguarded  Tsar  was  as  free  and  cheerful 
in  Moscow  as  if  he  had  never  heard  of  revolutions, 
nihilists,  assassins. 

*  One  of  the  revolutionaries  mentioned  in  "Undiscovered  Russia." 
Varvara  Sergevna,  his  sister,  is  a  Red  Cross  nurse  now. 


IN  MOSCOW  25 

With  the  outbreak  of  the  war,  hterature  and  art  came 
to  an  end.  "I  am  no  longer  a  painter,"  says  Pereplo- 
tchikof .  "  I  have  almost  forgotten  that  I  used  to  paint 
pictures."  Pereplotchikof  serves  on  six  committees  for 
the  care  of  the  wounded.  Maxim  Gorky  has  volun- 
teered to  go  to  the  front  with  the  Red  Cross.  The 
author  of  "Jealousy"  and  "Sanin"  works  at  the  Brest 
Station  all  day  hke  a  porter,  carrying  wounded  soldiers 
from  the  just-arrived  Red  Cross  trains  to  the  am- 
bulances and  motor-cars  and  Red  Cross  trams  waiting 
to  convey  them  to  the  hospitals.  Nothing  is  now  more 
familiar  than  the  double-coach  Red  Cross  tramcars 
gliding  slowly  along  the  iron  ways,  full  of  wounded, 
the  first  coach  with  plain  glass,  full  of  those  lightly 
injured,  the  second  with  ground  glass,  but  open  win- 
dows, showing  a  dozen  or  twenty  upper  and  lower  beds 
laden  with  the  heavily  wounded. 

All  the  doss-houses,  and  many  schools  and  churches, 
are  occupied  by  the  wounded.  People  of  all  ranks  in 
society  are  working  together  for  their  care.  As  I  sit 
with  Pereplotchikof,  the  telephone  bell  rings.  It  is  to 
say  that  a  certain  big  doss-house  is  much  in  need  of 
Bibles  and  books  of  a  religious  character,  a  few  gramo- 
phones are  asked  for ;  and  some  women  might  help, 
reading  aloud,  writing  letters,  and  chatting  to  the 
iUiterate.  The  nurses  have  all  their  spare  time  occupied 
in  writing  love-letters  to  the  soldiers'  sweethearts. 

I  accompanied  my  friend  to   the  doss-house,   an 


26  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

immense  building  near  the  Riazansky  Station.  The 
chief  doctor  showed  me  round.  I  expected  to  see  a 
very  mournful  spectacle,  but  was  agreeably  surprised. 
Not  one  in  twenty  of  the  wounded  was  lying  in  his 
bed.  Every  hall  was  full  of  gaiety  and  life ;  the  sol- 
diers walking  about  in  their  white  undergarments, 
talking,  reading,  laughing,  playing  cards;  men  with 
bandaged  legs,  bandaged  hands,  heads,  bodies,  with 
their  bare  feet  stuck  into  hospital  slippers. 

The  doctor,  who  confessed  to  a  great  admiration  for 
the  EngHsh,  took  me  into  the  operating  room,  a  place 
of  blood  and  disinfectant ;  into  the  bandaging  room, 
where  a  young  soldier  was  having  his  arm  tied  up  anew ; 
into  the  big  basement  hall,  where  the  daily  cabbage 
soup  is  served  out. 

"What  has  happened  to  the  tramps  and  beggars 
who  used  to  sleep  here  o'  nights?"  I  asked. 

"There  are  fewer  of  them,"  said  the  doctor.  "Since 
the  sale  of  vodka  stopped  and  the  war  began,  the  old 
night  population  seems  to  have  vanished.  I  do  not 
know  how  much  good  the  war  will  ultimately  bring, 
but  the  sobriety  which  it  has  already  brought  would 
justify  it." 

The  wounded  are  full  of  their  impressions  of  the 
war  and  of  Germany,  and  they  talk  readily.  Thus: 
"  Germany  is  a  fine  country,  no  comparison  with  our 
poor  villages  —  stone  houses,  brick  houses,  three 
storeys,    fine    carpets,    chairs,    gramophones.     Every 


IN   MOSCOW  27 

house  has  a  gramophone,  and  we  all  learned  how  to 
set  them  going.  One  day,  I  had  just  come  into  a 
house  and  set  a  gramophone  going,  when  an  officer 
puts  his  head  into  the  broken  window  and  says,  'Stop 
that  music  at  once  I '  I  didn't  know  how  to  stop  it,  so  I 
just  hits  it,  hiff,  in  the  middle  of  the  wheel  and  it  goes 
into  bits  all  over  the  room.  Then  they  have  fiddles, 
and  every  house  has  a  big  black  box  with  a  lid  (piano), 
and  when  you  open  the  lid  and  bang  it  with  your  hand 
it  goes  ^hir,  bir,  hir ;  ho,  ho,  ho.^ 

"Is  there  plenty  to  eat?"  "Yes,  pigs,  as  many  as 
you  like.  We  had  roast  German  pork  every  day; 
hundreds,  thousands  of  pigs.  We  caught  them  and 
carried  them  to  the  camp."  The  wounded  man  hunts 
in  the  sack  by  his  bedside  and  brings  out  a  murderous 
looking  knife.  "That's  what  the  Germans  kill  them 
with,"  he  says. 

Many  wounded  have  trophies  taken  from  the  dead 
and  from  the  houses  of  the  ransacked  villages  — 
watches,  rings,  guns ;  one  we  saw  had  a  bracelet.  A 
wounded  officer  whom  we  met  at  another  place  told  us 
how  the  streets  of  the  German  towns  were  strewn  with 
books,  gramophones,  vases,  silver-plate,  white  piano 
keys  in  handfuls,  but  no  pictures,  no  statues.  The 
soldiers  never  touch  any  pictures,  not  even  that  of  the 
Emperor  William  —  saying  merely  of  him  as  they  look 
at  his  picture  on  the  wall :  "How  the  ends  of  his  mous- 
tache are  turned  up!"     "We'll  turn  them  down  for 


28  RUSSIA   AND   THE  WORLD 

him,  eh  brothers  ?  "  The  wounded  are  always  asked  — 
"Do  the  Germans  fight  well?"  and  they  answer,  "Yes, 
like  dogs";  or  "Not  with  the  bayonet.  They  carry 
their  bayonets  in  their  belts;  we  always  have  ours 
fixed  and  ready.  They  are  afraid  of  the  hand-to-hand 
struggle.  They  think  the  Cossacks  are  devils  who 
live  far  away  in  the  forests  like  savages,  Hving  on  raw 
meat  and  blood.     They  are  all  afraid  of  the  Cossacks." 

There  is  great  enthusiasm  wherever  people  are 
gathered  together,  and  you  know  that  all  the  talk  is 
war  —  war  only.  It  is  difiicult  to  get  seated  at  a 
restaurant  and  make  a  meal,  owing  to  the  number  of 
times  national  anthems  are  called  for.  Every  minute 
or  so  an  ofiicer  comes  in,  orders  a  bottle  of  wine,  and 
then,  taking  glass  in  hand,  stands  up  and  says,  "  Gen- 
tlemen, our  adored  monarch!"  or,  "Gentlemen,  our 
noble  aUies.  Vive  la  France!"  Or,  "Gentlemen, 
the  English!"  — "The  Belgians!"  and  the  orchestra 
goes  through  the  national  hymns  while  the  toasts  are 
dnmk. 

One  of  the  wounded  who  appeared  at  Moscow  was 
Kuzma  Krutchkof,  the  first  to  receive  the  ribbon  of 
the  Order  of  St.  George  for  bravery.  He  gave  a  fine 
account  of  himself.  He  is  a  handsome  young  man, 
dark,  slender,  with  a  clever  look  on  his  sunburnt  face. 

"It  was  like  this,"  he  said.  "On  the  30th  of  July, 
at  ten  o'clock  in  the  morning,  we  set  out  from  the  town 
of  Calvary  to  Alexandrovo.    There  were  four  of  us  —  I 


IN   MOSCOW  29 

and  my  friends  Ivan  Schtegolkof,  Vassily  Astakhof, 
and  Michael  Ivanof .  As  we  were  climbing  a  little  hill 
we  came  up  against  a  detachment  of  German  soldiers 
from  the  9th  Lancers,  twenty-seven  men  with  two 
officers.  At  first  the  Germans  were  afraid,  but  after- 
wards they  made  a  dash  at  us.  They  had  the  advan- 
tage of  position,  because  they  were  on  the  hill  and  we 
below  them.  However,  we  stood  to  them  steadily  and 
killed  a  few  of  them  as  they  came.  In  evading  their 
attack  we  got  separated  from  one  another  —  Schte- 
golkof fought  on  my  left ;  on  my  right,  near  a  bit  of 
marsh,  fought  Astakhof  and  Ivanof.  There  were 
eleven  Germans  fighting  me.  I  did  not  expect  to  re- 
main alive,  but  I  resolved  to  sell  my  life  dearly.  My 
horse  was  agile  and  obedient.  I  wanted  to  use  my  rifle, 
but  in  my  haste  the  cartridge  slipped  out.  A  German 
slashed  at  my  fingers,  so  I  threw  the  rifle  down,  seized 
my  sword  and  set  to  work.  I  got  several  slight  wounds, 
and  I  felt  the  blood  flowing  from  them,  but  I  knew 
they  were  not  serious.  For  every  wound  I  got  I  gave 
back  a  deadly  blow  which  quieted  a  German  for  ever. 
An  officer  sprang  at  me,  but  I  repulsed  his  attack  and 
made  him  run  and  then  chased  him.  When  I  caught 
him  up,  I  waved  my  sword  and  hacked  at  his  head,  but 
only  dented  his  helmet.  I  struck  out  again,  but  the 
officer  jerked  his  head  aside  as  he  dashed  along,  and  my 
sword  caught  him  on  the  neck  and  almost  completely 
cut  his  head  off.     I  killed  a  few  more  men,  but  I  began 


30  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

to  feel  that  my  sword  was  difficult  to  wield,  so  I  caught 
hold  of  one  of  the  German  lances  and  killed  all  the 
others  in  turn  with  it. 

"Meanwhile  my  friends  had  managed  the  rest  of 
them  very  cleverly.  Twenty-four  corpses  lay  on  the 
ground,  some  being  dragged  about  in  terror  by  the 
horses.  My  friends  were  a  little  hurt  and  I  had  six- 
teen wounds,  but  they  were  all  'nothing,'  just  cuts  on 
the  back,  on  my  neck,  and  on  my  hands.  My  horse 
was  hurt  in  eleven  places,  too,  but  he  carried  me 
back  for  six  versts  without  being  attended  to.  Then 
he  got  weaker,  and  a  peasant  carried  us  the  other  four 
versts  in  his  cart.  After  our  wounds  had  been  bound 
up,  they  sent  the  four  of  us  to  the  hospital,  and  after- 
wards here  to  Moscow,  though  I  asked  to  stay  in 
Vitevsk,  because  there  was  no  need  for  me  to  go  to 
Moscow  —  it  only  meant  troubling  the  authorities, 
and  we  were  quite  well.  On  the  14th  of  August, 
General  Rennenkampf  came  to  me,  and,  taking  off  his 
Order  of  St.  George,  pinned  it  on  my  breast,  and  con- 
gratulated me  on  receiving  it. 

"My  horse  is  alive  and  well.  To-morrow  I  am  off 
again  to  the  war  —  it  is  dull  for  a  healthy  fellow  to  be 
here  doing  nothing.  After  our  fight  with  the  Germans, 
only  our  boots  and  caps  were  whole.  All  the  rest  of 
our  clothes  were  cut  and  torn  to  bits.  However,  the 
fight  was  not  much  —  the  Germans  cannot  use  their 
lances  well ;  they  hold  them  stupidly  under  their  arms, 


IN  MOSCOW  31 

and  cannot  wield  them  about;  you  can  easily  beat 
them  off  and  hurt  them,  especially  on  our  good  horses. 
I  am  married  —  yes ;  all  of  us  are  married.  I  have 
two  young  sons,  healthy  little  fellows.  I'll  see  them 
again  some  day,  if  God  wills.  But  our  Cossack  women 
and  children  must  get  used  to  accidents." 

Kuzma  has  his  picture  in  all  the  newspapers,  but  he 
has  now  returned  to  the  war. 

Moscow  is  full  of  stories,  for  the  convalescent  are 
up  and  about,  and  three  times,  seven  times,  kill  the 
slain.  At  the  bath-houses  of  the  city,  it  is  amusing  to 
see  naked  soldiers  exhibiting  their  wounds  and  telling 
the  stories  of  their  battles  to  an  admiring  throng  of 
civilians,  amusing  to  see  the  siege  of  garrulous  soldiers 
in  the  streets,  in  the  taverns  (where  only  tea  is  sold), 
and  in  the  tramcars.  Moscow  is  very  near  to 
the  war. 

I  met,  at  the  house  of  Vassily  Vassilitch,  a  young 
oflScer  just  returned  from  the  front  with  dispatches,  and 
he  gave  a  very  interesting  account  of  the  state  of  the  con- 
quered territory  in  Eastern  Prussia.  He  is  a  cousin  of 
one  of  my  Moscow  friends,  a  tall,  energetic  young  man 
with  sunburnt  face,  eyes  wide-opened,  as  in  astonish- 
ment, eyes  that  you  feel  have  seen  things,'  lips  parted  as 
if  startled,  voice  still  hoarse  from  shouting  commands 
upon  the  battlefield. 

"Well,  what  is  it  all  like  out  there?" 

He  takes  a  chair,  puts  it  back  facing  you,  and  sits 


32  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

astride  of  it,  and  begins  to  talk  as  if  bursting  with  the 
need  to  tell  his  story. 

''How  do  we  fight?  Oh,  splendid!  The  forward 
movement  is  accomplished  singing.  The  Germans 
seem  distressed  by  the  songs  of  the  Russians  as  they 
fight.  Yes,  the  Germans  are  just  as  brave  as  we  are. 
They  stick  to  it  to  the  last  point.  When  captured, 
they  behave  very  correctly,  and  to  all  questions  answer, 
*I  have  no  information  to  give.'  They  will  ansv/er  no 
questions  whatever." 

"How  do  the  German  population  behave?" 
"Nevazhno;  not  very  well.  They  shoot  at  us. 
They  spy  a  great  deal,  and  have  been  able  to  give 
much  information  by  means  of  the  subterranean 
telephone.  We  could  not  understand  how  it  was  the 
German  artillery  fire  was  so  skilfully  directed,  till  we 
discovered  the  underground  telephone.  In  a  base- 
ment cellar  one  day  we  actually  found  an  eighty-five- 
year-old  crone  telephoning  to  the  enemy.  During  our 
questioning  she  had  a  fit  and  died  of  fright." 

"What  are  the  towns  like — Insterburg,  for  instance?" 
"  Insterburg  is  a  fine  town,  about  the  size  of  Nizhni- 
Novgorod.  Life  isn't  much  upset.  Business  goes  on. 
The  value  of  a  rouble  has  been  fixed  at  three  marks, 
and  everything  is  cheap.  We  sometimes  fear  poison, 
and  there  have  been  some  cases  of  poisoning,  but  the 
inhabitants  are  afraid  of  punishment.  As  for  shooting 
from  windows,  we  have  fixed  a  tariff  —  first  shot  from 


IN   MOSCOW  33 

a  house,  we  blow  up  the  house ;  second  shot  from  the 
same  street  we  blow  up  the  street.  That  is  grim 
earnest  on  our  part.  Gumbinen  is  a  smaller  town, 
and  is  in  rather  a  bad  state.  Eydkunen  is  a  terrible 
sight,  has  no  semblance  of  a  town.  When  I  came 
through  with  my  regiment,  the  only  thing  we  found 
was  beer;  the  cellars  were  full  of  it.  Our  men,  who 
had  not  had  beer  or  vodka  for  a  month,  went  mad 
over  it.  There  was  a  stream  of  beer  down  the  main 
street.  You  must  understand  there  was  not  a  soul 
there  but  ourselves,  not  a  house  that  was  not  blackened 
by  fire,  not  a  window  that  was  not  broken,  not  a  room 
that  had  not  been  ransacked.  Precious  things  of  all 
kinds  lay  in  the  streets,  ruined  and  soaked  by  rain. 

"As  for  the  villages,  they  have  mostly  been  looted 
or  burned.  The  Germans  fire  them  as  they  retire. 
Often  at  night  we  have  been  glad  of  the  Hght  of  the 
burning  farms  and  villages,  helping  to  find  our  wounded 
on  the  battlefield.  The  conflagrations  made  night  like 
day. 

"  Yes ;  it  makes  a  melancholy  impression  to  go  through 
village  after  village,  blackened,  deserted,  looted.  Once 
I  noticed  a  ripe  apple  on  a  tree  in  one  of  the  looted 
villages ;  it  caused  me  some  surprise.  It  was  some- 
thing that  had  escaped  the  plunderer. 

"It  is  dangerous  travelling  alone  or  in  twos.  Even 
this  conquered  country  is  full  of  ambushes.  The 
people  are  extremely  hostile.     There  are  robber  bands, 


34  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

detachments  of  German  cavalry  as  yet  uncaptured, 
armed  bicyclists.  Many  soldiers  skulk  in  the  woods. 
It  is  good  for  us  that  the  German  roads  are  so  firm,  and 
we  can  make  journeys  much  more  quickly  than  in  the 
sand  or  mud  of  Russian  Poland." 

"What  is  going  to  happen  next  up  there?" 
"Oh,  a  big  battle,  most  likely.  The  Germans  are 
straining  every  nerve  to  arrange  a  big  defeat  for  us. 
Every  one  who  can  hold  a  gun  is  being  pressed  into 
service  against  us.  We  know  that  by  the  dead  they 
leave  in  the  field ;  men  without  uniforms  and  in  their 
usual  civilian  attire,  many  sailors  from  their  warships, 
children  of  fifteen  and  sixteen,  old  men  past  the  age  of 
fighting.  Progress  is  very  difficult,  but  the  news  of  the 
success  in  Austria  inspires  us,  as  no  doubt  it  dispirits 
the  enemy.  And,  as  every  one  knows,  we  have  an 
enormous  number  of  men  in  the  background  —  fresh, 
eager.  I  go  back,  myself,  with  reinforcements." 
"How  did  you  feel  under  fire?" 
"  It  was  unpleasant  at  first,  but  after  a  while  it  became 
even  pleasant,  exhilarating.  One  feels  an  extraordinary 
freedom  in  the  midst  of  death,  with  bullets  whistling 
round.  The  same  with  all  the  soldiers :  the  wounded 
all  want  to  get  well  and  return  to  the  fight.  They 
fight  with  tears  of  joy  in  their  eyes." 

"They  feel  active  hate  towards  the  Germans?" 
"No;    I   wouldn't   say   that.    They   regard   them 
merely  as  the  enemy  —  the  old  enemy." 


IN   MOSCOW  35 

"There  is  a  certain  beauty,  in  a  way,  in  going  to 
death  with  songs,"  said  I. 

"I  would  even  say  there  is  no  greater  beauty,"  says 
the  young  officer. 

So  war  comes  into  its  own  in  the  popular  imagina- 
tion. Despite  the  praise  of  peace  and  the  comfort  of 
peace,  and  even  the  fact  that  we  are  fighting  to  obtain 
peace,  war  seems  to  be  a  thing  that  must  eternally 
recur  —  one  of  the  human  Uturgies  of  beauty. 


Why  Russia  is  Fighting 

Britain  is  fighting  for  disarmament  and  universal 
peace.  France  is  fighting  to  save  herself  from  the 
monster  who  has  already  devoured  a  portion  of  her  side, 
Alsace  and  Lorraine.  Germany  is  fighting  to  impose 
her  order  on  the  rest  of  the  world,  to  make  us  all,  as  it 
were,  wear  German  uniforms.  Germany  has  had  great 
dreams;  one  of  them  was  of  a  German  and  Austrian 
belt  from  Heligoland  to  Constantinople ;  another  was  of 
a  finally  subjugated  France  and  possibly  of  a  Belgium 
absorbed  into  the  German  Empire.  Germany,  taking 
herself  seriously  as  the  standard-bearer  of  Western 
civilisation,  considers  that  she  has  carried  order,  clean- 
liness, education  and  national  efficiency  to  a  point  of 
perfection  unattainable  by  the  people  of  other  coun- 
tries. Russia  is^fighting  to  preserve  her  national  hfe 
and  religion. 

Of  all  nations  the  most  abhorrent  to  the  Germans 
must  be  the  Russians.  The  Russian  character  tem- 
perament and  mind  are  all  opposed  to  the  German  soul. 
The  Russian  subtlety  and  contradictoriness,  the  Rus- 
sian mysticism  and  unpracticality,  above  all  things, 

36 


WHY  RUSSIA  IS   FIGHTING  37 

Russian  national  untidiness,  are  intolerable  to  the 
German.  The  German  is  filled  with  loathing  directly 
he  passes  the  Russian  frontier ;  the  difference  between 
the  well  built  towns,  storehouses,  and  firm  highways  of 
Eastern  Prussia  and  the  wildernesses  of  Russian  Poland 
is  almost  incredible.  To  enter  Russia  is  to  step  down 
into  an  inferior  world,  a  world  that  needs  setting  right. 

"Russia  offers  wonderful  material  for  the  making  of 
history,"  said  Bismarck;  "let  but  its  feminine  type  of 
population  be  interbred  with  our  strong,  masculine 
Germans."  "The  Slavonic  peoples  are  not  a  nation," 
wrote  the  Emperor  William,  "but  rather  soil  on  which 
a  nation  with  a  historic  mission  might  be  grown." 

In  this  it  is  impossible  not  to  see  a  considerable 
amount  of  German  stupidity.  The  Germans  are  going 
to  suffer  terribly  through  their  ignorance  of  the  strength 
of  Russia,  through  their  inability  to  realise  to  what  an 
extent  the  Russians  are  national.  It  is  because  of 
their  national  individuahty  and  of  their  vast  popula- 
tion of  like  faith,  like  tongue,  and  like  point  of  view 
that  the  Russians  go  to  the  front  in  confidence.  When 
the  Germans  attack  the  Russians  they  are  attacking  a 
nation  that  has  a  background  of  8,000  miles. 
y  The  war  has  come  as  a  relief  to  Russia,  uniting  all 
Cparties  under  one  idea.  For  a  long  while  Russia  has 
bee»  subjected  to  a  strong  German  influence.  Ger- 
many has  long  felt  that  "something  might  be  done" 
with  Russia,  and  it  has  done  all  it  could  to  give  a 


38  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

Germanising  tint  to  Russian  government.  It  is  not 
without  significance,  that  story  in  Dostoiefifsky's 
"Adult,"  of  the  German  who  shot  himself  through 
vexation  at  the  idea  that  Russia  might  come  to  nothing. 
The  brutality  with  which  the  Russian  revolutionary 
movement  was  put  down  was  not  only  approved  by 
the  Germans,  but  received  a  considerable  amount  of 
inspiration  from  them. 

Prince  Trubetskoy  in  a  recent  article  is  even  ready 
to  say  that  there  lies  a  German  hidden  under  many 
Russian  breasts.  If  that  is  so,  it  may  account  for  many 
a  brutal  act  and  much  of  the  feeling  of  oppression  in 
Russia.  When  war  was  declared  Russia  suddenly  grew 
lighter,  as  if  an  evil  spirit  had  jumped  off  her  back. 
German  subjects  were  put  under  arrest  and  sent  to 
remote  places.  German  shops  were  closed.  German 
goods  tabooed ;  Berlinskaya  Street  became  London- 
skaya,  Petersburg  became  Petrograd,  Schlusselburg 
became  Oreshof,  Kronstadt  something  else;  in  many 
schools  the  German  language  was  given  up  and  English 
taken  instead ;  the  Hotel  Vienna  three  doors  from  me 
became  the  Hotel  of  Holy  Victory.  But  not  only  that. 
A  little  German  devil  of  harshness  and  iron-heeledness 
jumped  out  and  disappeared,  and  the  Grand  Duke 
Commander-in-Chief  proclaimed  reconciliation  to  the 
Poles,  and  every  one  became  kinder  to  one  another. 
People  in  Russia  are  naturally  kind ;  they  have  become 
even  gentler  since  the  war  began. 


WHY  RUSSIA  IS   FIGHTING  39 

"The  German  title  Graf  is  related  to  the  Russian 
verb  grahit,  to  grab,  to  steal,"  says  Rozanof,  of  the 
Novoe  Vremya.  "The  Germans  have  always  been  a 
predatory  race  as  far  as  the  Slavs  are  concerned.  They 
are  the  very  opposite  of  the  Russians.  In  the  whole 
of  Russian  literature  there  is  not  one  page  in  which 
mockery  is  made  of  poverty,  of  suffering,  of  a  girl  who 
has  been  betrayed,  or  of  a  child  that  is  illegitimate. 
Russian  hterature  is  one  long  hymn  to  the  injured  and 
insulted."  * 

The  whole  of  Russian  popular  feeling  is  of  tender- 
ness rather  than  rapacity,  and  though,  of  course,  there 
lurks  in  the  Russian  soul  not  only  the  brutal  German 
but  the  more  brutal  Tartar,  yet  it  is  love  to  one  another, 
fellow-sympathy  in  suffering,  and  gentle  sociability  that 
keep  the  great  nation  together.  It  is  these  that  unite 
them  round  the  sacred  ark  of  the  race.  The  Germans, 
sneering  at  the  weak  and  at  the  victims  of  their  lust  for 
power,  with  their  brutal  materialism  and  their  cruelty, 
represent  that  which  is  most  foreign  to  the  Russian 
heart,  and  consequently  that  which  is  most  abhorred  by 
all  the  people. 

One  of  the  commonest  headings  in  Russian  papers 
is  "Holy  War."  A  war,  if  it  is  going  to  have  any 
success  in  Russia,  must  be  a  holy  war.  The  Crimean 
War  was  a  holy  war  to  protect  the  Russian  pilgrims 
from  the  persecutions  of  the  Turks.    The  Japanese 

*V.  V.  Rozanof,  "The  Russian  Idea." 


40  RUSSIA  AND   THE   WORLD 

War  never  succeeded  in  getting  thought  holy  —  that 
was  why  it  failed  so  disastrously.  This  war  is  holy  to 
every  one,  and  its  motto  is  —  getting  rid  of  the  German 
^spirit  in  life,  getting  rid  of  the  sheer  materialistic  point 
of  view,  getting  rid  of  brutality  and  the  lack  of  under- 
standing of  others.  The  great  spiritual  power  of  the 
war  has  worked  miracles  in  the  social  life  of  the  people. 

How  seriously  the  war  is  taken.  "What  do  you 
make  of  the  war?"  I  asked  a  well-known  Russian  the 
other  day. 

"It  is  the  Last  Judgment,"  said  he.  "Every  one 
has  been  handed  in  his  account.  Now  we've  got  to  get 
square  with  Destiny.  We  must  realise  all  our  resources 
of  will,  and  faith,  and  health,  and  put  them  in  front  of 
our  national  life  to  save  it.  It  reminds  me  of  the  crisis 
in  the  drama  of  'Peer  Gynt. '  You  remember  when 
the  button  moulder  came  and  said  to  Peer  that  his  day 
was  done,  and  that  he  must  be  put  into  the  melting-pot 
and  recast  as  someone  else.  Peer  searched  in  his  his- 
tory and  in  his  life  to  get  something  that  could  redeem 
him.  Only  in  the  peasant  girl  Solveig  did  he  find  refuge 
from  the  moulder.  So  with  Russia  —  to  her  also  the 
button  moulder  has  come  and  offered  to  melt  her  up 
with  a  strong  alloy  of  Germany  into  something  new. 
She  must  go  to  her  peasants  if  she  wishes  to  remain 
herself.  In  the  hour  of  distress  it  is  our  peasants  who 
will  save  us." 

Russia,  above  all  things,  is  fighting  that  she  may  go 


WHY  RUSSIA  IS   FIGHTING  41 

on  being  herseK.  Everyone  who  loves  Russia  believes 
in  her  personal  destiny.  She  is  the  youngest  of  the 
nations ;   she  has  a  great  life  before  her. 

We  fight,  and  the  year  grows  colder  and  more  bitter. 
The  yellow  leaves  are  falling  day  by  day,  and  winter 
is  at  hand.  Commissaries  are  in  Moscow  buying 
heavy  overcoats  for  the  Army  for  winter,  and  we 
know  that  the  war  becomes  heavier,  gloomier.  Yet 
now  and  again  we  spare  a  glance  beyond  winter  and 
ask,  what  will  it  be  like  when  the  foe  is  beaten  ? 

Will  not  Russia  emerge  greater  than  before  —  the 
true  mother  of  the  Slav  races?  Will  not  the  Eastern 
Church  remain  unshaken,  surer  of  itself,  with  aU  its 
heritage  of  early  Christian  tradition  and  present-day 
spiritual  strength? 


VI 

Is  It  a  Last  War? 

All  the  same,  I  do  not  believe  in  this  war  as  a  last 
war,  or  in  this  war  as  "a,  war  of  things,"  war  of  ammu- 
nition, rifles,  and  clothes,  rather  than  of  men  and  ideals 
and  emotions,  a  war  that  is  only  a  matter  of  mathe- 
matics or  addition  and  subtraction. 

I  have  just  read  in  Russian  translation  an  article 
by  H.  G.  Wells  on  this  war  as  a  war  of  things,  a  war  of 
equipment  and  machines.  "Things  also  make  war," 
says  the  Russian  translation.  And  the  editor  of  the 
Russian  paper  insists  on  the  lessons  of  that  remarkable 
Western  book  "A  World  Set  Free"  and  on  the  power 
of  material  things  to  put  the  world  right.  I  think  it  is 
a  pity  that  the  author  of  "A  World  Set  Free"  insists 
on  the  power  of  material  things.  We  British,  alas,  are 
only  too  ready  to  think  that  it  is  things  that  count.  It 
gives  rest  to  our  souls  to  fix  the  responsibility  upon 
something  solid  and  material  and  accepted.  Hence 
our  passion  for  things,  Acts  of  Parliament,  book  regula- 
tions, equipments,  conventions. 

What  we  really  need  is  a  younger  generation  that  has 
faith  in  England's  destiny,  we  need  a  nation  physically 
fit,  we  need  knowledge  and  training  so  that  we  do  not 

42 


IS   IT  A  LAST  WAR?  43 

in  future  wait  until  the  time  of  war  to  learn  what  are, 
for  instance,  the  possibilities  of  the  use  of  submarines, 
and  of  floating  mines.  We  need  brains  used  for  the 
nation's  sake.  And  last  of  all,  as  Mr.  Wells  says,  "we 
do,  of  course,  need  manufacture." 

As  a  matter  of  fact  we  have  got  manufacture,  we 
don't  need  to  ask  for  it.  "I  can't  get  out  of  the  habit 
of  thinking  in  dozens  of  gross,"  said  a  London  manufac- 
turer to  me  the  other  day. 

We  go  on  manufacturing  like  the  quern  at  the  bottom 
of  the  sea.  There  was  once  a  wonderful  quern  which 
came  into  the  possession  of  a  stupid  man,  and  he  said 
to  it  "Grind  me  herrings  and  soup,  and  grind  them 
quickly  and  well."  Unfortunately,  he  did  not  know 
how  to  stop  the  machine,  and  it  is  grinding  out  herrings 
and  soup  to  this  day.     Hence  the  Atlantic  Ocean. 

The  German  schoolmaster  is  our  foe  more  than 
the  German  manufacturer.  The  longer  time  German 
children  stay  at  school,  and  the  bigger  sacrifice  of  time 
given  to  mihtary  training  tell  tremendously  in  this 
national  struggle.  As  William  Watson  writes  in  one 
of  his  poems : 

"  It's  ignorance,  ignorance,  ignorance 
Will  pull  Old  England  down." 

Yes,  ignorance,  lack  of  national  faith,  lack  of  good 
bodies.  Only  England  will  not  be  pulled  down;  we 
do  not  intend  to  let  her. 


44  RUSSIA   AND    THE   WORLD 

It  has  been  averred  that  Russia  was  prepared  for 
war,  having  the  things  ready.  But  that  is  to  make  a 
great  mistake.  The  Russians  are  winning  their  battles 
because  of  their  rehgious  faith,  their  physical  strength, 
and  their  sobriety.  Not  because  of  their  things,  their 
equipment.  It  is  the  Russians'  bare  breasts  in  the 
mouth  of  the  cannon,  their  songs  against  the  roar  of 
artillery.  They  are  inferior  in  guns,  inferior  in 
aircraft,  inferior  in  the  quahty  of  their  boots.  They 
have  frozen  and  starved  as  no  Germans  could 
freeze  or  starve.  And  they  have  won.  The  panoply 
of  Goliath  is  very  suggestive.  It  wins  battles  for  the 
Philistines.  But  let  us  not  insist  on  it ;  it  is  the  other 
side  of  the  question  that  we  as  a  nation  are  most  ready 
to  forget. 

I  read  constantly  in  the  Russian  papers  our  English 
and  French  opinions  that  this  war  is  a  last  war,  a  war 
for  disarmament  and  universal  peace,  a  final  effort  to 
crush  "barbarism."  The  socialists  are  to  depose  the 
Kaiser.  The  working  men  of  England  are  to  enter 
into  alliance  with  the  working  men  of  foreign  countries 
to  avert  war  in  the  future.  The  working  men  in  Russia 
and  the  Hberal  bourgeoisie  are  greatly  edified  by  this. 
They  find  in  it  another  instance  of  the  greatness  of 
England.  England,  as  ever,  leads  the  other  nations, 
and  shows  them  the  ideal.  She  moves  step  by  step 
towards  the  millennium. 

But  despite  the  pleasing  sentiment,  is  it  not  probable 


IS   IT  A  LAST  WAR?  45 

that  as  a  result  of  the  war  niihtarism  will  increase 
throughout  the  whole  world  ?  We  shall  probably  beat 
Germany,  but  we  shall  probably  arrange  with  her  a 
generous  peace  —  not  a  humiliating  peace.  Russia  will 
remain  a  great  military  nation  the  foundation  of  w^hose 
aristocracy  is  military  rank,  and  not,  as  with  us  in  Eng- 
land, ci\dl  title.  IVIighty  Japan  will  remain.  Italy, 
who  wantonly  acquired  TripoH,  will  remain.  England, 
with  her  dreadnoughts  and  with  perhaps  the  Navy 
taken  from  the  Germans  and  possibly  with  some  system 
of  conscription,  will  remain.  And  war  has  become 
more  interesting. 

There  is  one  nation  that  sincerely  wishes  peace,  and 
that  is  America.  It  is  fortunate  for  America  that  her 
people  speak  Enghsh  and  seem  to  be  English  by  race. 
We  British  give  them  a  sentimental  protection,  and  also, 
as  it  happens,  an  accidental  protection.  If  Germany 
won,  America  would  be  in  danger.  As  it  is,  the  extreme 
wealth  of  the  American  people  sheds  a  baleful  light  on 
her  destiny.  As  war  goes  on,  with  its  tremendous  ex- 
pense, America  gains  financial  preponderance  day  by 
day.  She  wiU  be  in  a  position  to  hold  Europe  in 
bondage  when  the  war  is  over.  She  seems  destined  to 
attract  to  herself  more  and  more  European  hate. 

The  world  in  which  the  armies  move  up  and  down 
and  against  one  another,  in  which  there  have  been  in 
the  past  cultures  greater  than  our  own,  where,  since 
everlasting,  wise  men  have  risen  and  spoken,  poets  sung, 


46  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

priests  anointed  to  sacrifice  —  is  the  hurly-burly,  which 
remains  ever  the  same.  It  is  a  mystery  play  planned  by 
the  gods,  and  we  all  know  our  parts  involuntarily.  But 
it  is  not  a  play  in  five  acts,  it  goes  on  for  ever.  It  does 
not  give  an  intellectual  satisfaction,  but  a  sensuous 
pleasure.  The  whispering  of  the  nations  together,  the 
conspiracy,  the  march  of  men,  the  clash  of  arms,  the 
flow  of  blood,  the  dance  of  death  —  it  blends  in  idea 
and  streams  up  to  heaven  in  the  great  symphony. 


VII 

Autumn  Leaves 

When  I  went  to  see  Vassily  Vassilitch  one  day  he 
said  to  me,  "Have  you  heard  the  earth  crying?" 

"What  do  you  mean?"  I  asked. 

"Why,"  said  he,  "I've  heard  her  crying.  As  I  lay 
in  the  grass  with  my  ear  to  the  ground  I  heard  her. 
Like  this  oo-m,  oo-m,  oo-m.  It  was  the  time  the  soldiers 
were  being  mobilised  and  women  were  sobbing  in  every 
cottage  and  at  every  turning  of  the  road,  so  it  may  only 
have  been  that  I  heard.  But  it  seemed  to  me  the  earth 
herself  was  crying,  so  gently,  so  sadly,  that  my  own 
heart  ached." 

I  understood  what  he  meant.  One  night  in  Septem- 
ber, when  I  saw  the  first  big,  moist,  yellow  leaves  come 
down  on  the  wind,  a  thought  whispered  itself  to  my 
heart  —  the  soldiers  are  dying.  As  I  lay  abed,  long 
after  midnight,  and  listened  to  the  moaning  wind  I 
thought  what  many  will  think  this  autumn  —  the 
leaves  are  falling,  falling  —  and  away,  far  away  on 
the  battlefield,  the  soldiers  are  dying,  dying.  Listen 
to  the  wind  in  the  trees,  and  you  hear  the  great  storm 
wind  of  Odin  roaring  through  the  Life-tree  Yggdrasil. 

47 


48  RUSSIA  AND   THE   WORLD 

You  hear  the  rush  of  the  valkyries,  the  Choosers  of  the 
slain. 

All  the  way  from  Moscow  to  the  seat  of  war  the 
forests  are  yellow  and  red,  and  the  glades  and  meadows 
are  strewn  with  dead  leaves.  Only  on  the  fringe  of  the 
Baltic  is  it  green  as  in  England  at  this  time  of  the  year. 
But  even  on  the  Baltic  shore  the  symbol  is  showing. 
Such  a  violent  gale  is  raging  that  leaves  and  stems  are 
broken  off  before  their  time,  and  the  feet  tread  gently 
on  a  moving  carpet  of  wrenched  leaves. 

In  Moscow  on  the  boulevards  hundreds  of  Kttle 
children  with  spades  and  pails  make  sand  castles  and 
fortifications  and  play  at  war  whilst  the  leaves  dance 
round  them  in  circles  and  spirals.  At  Libau  on  the 
seashore  the  leaves  race  past  mingled  in  clouds  of 
bhnding  sand,  whilst  beside  them,  and,  as  it  were, 
attacking  them,  the  great  black  turbulent  sea  turns 
over  white  in  a  dozen  Hues  of  foaming  waves  and 
thundering  rollers.  The  white  steeds  of  the  sea  rush 
up  and  spend  themselves  and  die  as  if  they  also  were  in 
the  great  war. 

Good,  however,  to  be  nearer  the  war,  to  be,  as  it 
were,  on  the  way  to  the  war,  and  going  with  the  soldiers. 
When  the  war  broke  out  there  was  a  strange  strain  on 
the  mind.  The  feeling  in  London  and  Paris,  in  Eng- 
land and  France,  was  no  doubt  sharper,  more  terrible ; 
but  even  far  away  in  the  depths  of  Russia,  where  there 
was  little  news  and  where  the  fighting  seemed  remotest 


AUTUMN  LEAVES  49 

of  all,  there  was  a  strain.  We  were  tired  out  at  the 
end  of  the  day  even  though  we  had  been  doing  nothing. 
Questions  for  which  there  were  no  answers  incessantly- 
dinned  at  the  brain  — 

"What  does  it  mean?"  "What  will  be  the  end  of 
it?"  "Is  England  safe?"  All  night  long  objurgatory 
thrills  passed  through  the  body  as  if  one  were  a  sort  of 
psychic  seismometer.  Moscow  nights  were  nights  of 
bad  dreams  wherein  one  suddenly  became  awake  and 
exclaimed  under  the  breath  such  things  as,  "This 
brings  an  era  to  a  close."  "When  this  is  over  we  may 
as  well  start  again  numbering  from  the  year  One." 

It  was  a  great  relief  when  I  felt  free  to  leave  Moscow 
and  could  set  out  for  the  front.  It  was  as  if  the  mind 
were  a  bird  tired  with  vain  flight  over  boundless  seas, 
and  the  bird  had  seen  an  island  whereon  to  come  to  rest. 

I  arrived  at  Libau  at  eight  o'clock.  All  was  dark. 
There  was  not  a  street  lamp.  The  gas  was  turned  low 
in  the  railway  station  and  the  blinds  were  drawn.  The 
blinds  were  drawn  in  every  house,  and  only  by  chinks 
of  Hght  could  you  tell  that  the  city  was  not  abandoned. 
As  I  sat  in  a  cab  going  to  a  hotel  a  tramcar  came  slowly 
past  with  dim  Hghts  showing  many  people.  Even  the 
lights  of  the  car  had  been  shrouded  in  Httle  curtains. 
There  were  no  people  on  the  pavements  and  only  my 
cab  in  the  street.  We  crossed  a  bridge  and  saw  the 
masts  and  black  funnels  of  many  ships  —  but  never  a 
light  among  them.     The  lamp  was  not  lit  on  the  light- 


50  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

house.  The  pier  was  black.  The  cinema  theatre  was 
closed  and  empty. 

I  went  into  the  hotel,  once  the  Petersburg,  now  the 
Petrograd  Hotel,  and  obtained  a  room.  The  Swiss 
spoke  to  me  in  German,  the  attendant  showing  me  my 
room  spoke  German,  the  waiter  addressed  me  in  Ger- 
man. It  seemed  to  me  they  might  as  well  have  left 
the  name  standing  as  Petersburg. 

The  population  of  all  the  district  along  the  Baltic 
shore  takes  its  stand  rather  as  German  than  as  Russian. 
Riga,  Windau,  Mittau,  Libau,  and  many  other  towns 
are  more  German  than  Russian.  The  High  Street,  the 
glavnaya  ulitsa  as  it  is  in  Russian,  is  in  these  towns  the 
Grosse  Strasse.  The  tramcar  stops  at  the  Halt  Platz. 
The  newspapers  sold  are  all  zeitungs  and  tagehlatts.  The 
children  talk  German  in  the  streets,  the  Jews  talk  Ger- 
man in  the  markets.  Even  Russian  officers  and  Sisters 
of  Mercy  are  heard  talking  German  together.  It  is, 
therefore,  rather  in  vain  that  the  Government,  as  I 
read  to-day,  is  going  to  re-name  all  the  streets  and 
suburbs  and  institutions  by  Russian  names.  Let  what 
is  German  so  remain ! 

A  cautious  population  that  of  Libau!  Four-fifths 
of  the  business  people  are  German  Jews,  and  they  have 
considerable  hope  that  they  will  not  suffer  too  much  if 
the  Germans  should  come  in.  Nevertheless,  they  have 
sent  their  women  and  their  valuables  into  the  depths  of 
the  country.     I  am  told  that  after  the  shelling  of  Libau,  in 


AUTUMN  LEAVES  51 

the  first  flush  of  the  idea  that  the  Germans  were  coming 
in,  many  tradesmen  refused  to  speak  or  understand 
Russian.  Whether  these  false  citizens  had  some  under- 
standing with  the  Germans  seems  to  be  a  matter  for 
investigation. 

Libau  was  never  in  flames.  That  was  the  first  lie 
of  the  war.  It  was  shelled  and  one  shell  fell  on  the 
sand,  but  all  the  others  fell  into  the  sea.  No  one  was 
hurt,  no  damage  done.  The  German  fleet  has  not 
reappeared. 

The  city  is  under  martial  law ;  no  lights  are  allowed 
at  night,  all  visitors  to  the  town  have  to  show  their 
passports  at  once,  sentries  march  up  and  down  the 
seashore,  there  is  a  military  patrol  of  the  streets.  It 
is  generally  felt  that  if  it  is  Germany's  intention  to 
wage  at  any  time  an  active  and  not  merely  a  passive  war 
.with  Russia,  this  territory,  so  German  in  its  sympathies, 
is  most  liable  to  invasion.  It  can  be  invaded  either  by 
land  or  by  sea.  In  any  case,  until  the  German  fleet  is 
destroyed  or  greatly  weakened  the  Baltic  ports  will  fear 
attack. 

That  is  why  I  came  up  to  Libau.  I  should  not  be 
surprised  at  any  moment  to  hear  the  sound  of  guns. 
Every  day  there  are  crowds  of  people  on  the  sands 
staring  out  to  sea,  as  if  they  were  likely  to  see  ships  of 
war.  But  necessarily  I  shaU  not  wait.  I  go  on  south- 
ward along  the  line  of  the  struggle  —  as  near  as  the 
authorities  will  let  me  go. 


52  RUSSIA  AND   THE  WORLD 

A  strange  impression  of  Libau  I  take  away  with  me 
—  the  empty  and  far-raging  sea  outside  the  town,  and 
the  quiet  harbour  inside  it.  The  harbour  is  a  strange 
sight  with  all  the  ships  standing  motionless  and  empty, 
the  big  black  and  red  British  ship,  Bannockburn;  the 
bulky  Baltica,  of  the  Baltic  Lloyd  Company;  a  ship 
for  some  reason  or  trick  painted  with  a  huge  red  cross ; 
the  Vorms,  the  Folsjo,  the  Commerce,  the  Aira,  the 
Kazan;  passenger  ships  plying  to  London,  others  to 
New  York.  This  Libau  is  the  chief  port  from  which 
sail  ordinarily  the  emigrants,  the  300,000  Jews,  Rus- 
sians, Poles,  and  Lithuanians  who  leave  Russia  annu- 
ally for  America,  but  who  are  now  closed  in  their 
Motherland  against  their  custom.  The  warehouses 
are  all  padlocked,  the  quays  are  bare  and  empty,  no 
dockers,  no  watchmen.  Not  a  man  on  all  these  vessels, 
not  a  puff  of  steam  from  a  funnel  or  a  pipe  in  them. 
All  is  quiet  and  empty. 


VIII 

The  Economic  Isolation  of  Russia 

Russia  at  the  beginning  of  the  war  expected  to  be 
shut  within  herself  and  cut  off  from  the  rest  of  Europe, 
it  seems.  Libau  and  Riga  and  the  rest  of  the  Baltic 
ports  were  dead,  so  far  as  shipping  is  concerned.  The 
Black  Sea  was  stoppered  at  the  Bosphorus,  and  the 
ports  of  Odessa,  Sebastopol,  Novorossisk,  and  Batum 
were  consequently  rendered  idle.  The  Arctic  Ocean 
was  considerably  enlivened  as  a  result  of  the  war; 
Archangel  has  become  a  great  port,  receiving  American 
liners,  passenger  steamers  from  England,  and  cargo 
boats  in  great  numbers.  English  steamers  have  sailed 
down  the  River  Ob  as  far  as  Tomsk  —  but  the  Arctic 
closes  early.  Towards  the  end  of  October  the  port 
of  Archangel  freezes  and  cannot  be  kept  open  later  than 
Christmas  even  with  the  help  of  ice-breakers.  European 
traffic  with  Russia  ceases  except  by  the  laborious  route 
of  the  gulf  of  Bothnia  and  Sweden.  But  mines  have 
been  laid  along  the  Finnish  coast  of  the  Gulf  of  Bothnia 
and  Russian  trade  seems  hkely  to  flow  through  Vladi- 
vostok alone  for  a  while. 

The  results  of  the  blockade  are  noticeable  in  Russia, 

53 


54  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

Ordinarily  Russia  exports  an  enormous  quantity  of 
foodstuffs  —  grain,  butter,  sugar,  eggs,  meat,  and  so 
on  —  and  as  a  consequence  of  her  inability  to  discharge 
these  products  she  has  an  immense  superabundance  of 
them  on  her  hands.  Directly  the  war  began  it  was 
possible  to  note  in  Siberia  what  may  be  called  "the 
returning  tide  of  butter"  ;  butter  had  no  exit  and  would 
not  keep,  and  therefore  had  to  be  sold  to  people  at  home 
at  any  price  —  the  peasant  women  in  Siberia  began  to 
use  butter  for  themselves  since  it  was  so  cheap.  There 
has  been  a  general  cheapening  of  food,  and  not  only  has 
the  cost  of  living  not  increased  as  a  result  of  the  war, 
but  it  has  decreased.  But  the  value  of  the  Russian 
rouble  has  gone  down  twenty  per  cent,  owing  to  Russia's 
inability  to  export  her  products. 

But  though  food  has  remained  cheap  other  things 
have  become  dear.  The  import  of  manufactured  goods 
into  Russia  has  almost  ceased,  and  the  stock  in  many 
shops  gets  less  and  less  and  is  marked  dearer  and 
dearer.  Germany  used  to  export  to  Russia  immense 
quantities  of  utensils  and  chemically  prepared  mate- 
rials. Nearly  all  the  medicines  came  from  Germany, 
and  there  is  now  a  great  famine  in  drugs.  Even  for 
the  wounded  and  the  sick  there  is  a  scarcity  of  medicine, 
and  it  costs  a  great  deal  more  than  it  should  do  to  cure 
the  poor  soldier.  Ink  costs  more  than  it  did,  photo- 
graphic materials,  clothes,  Vienna  boots  cost  fifty  per 
cent  more ;   Paris  hats  and  costumes  are  disappearing. 


THE   ECONOMIC   ISOLATION   OF  RUSSIA     55 

Russian  women  are  going  to  be  without  fashions  for  a 
long  time  to  come. 

So  the  middle  and  upper  classes  will  feel  the  pinch 
of  the  war ;  but  the  poor,  who  do  not  ask  for  anything 
more  than  food,  will  be  better  off,  especially  as  they 
are  saved  the  great  former  waste  of  money  on  vodka 
and  beer.  There  are  no  unemployed,  the  beggars  have 
almost  all  disappeared.  Women  and  children  are  work- 
ing in  the  factories  on  day  and  night  shifts.  Money  is 
flowing  like  water,  and,  for  all  manner  of  reasons,  life 
is  brisk.  War  is  a  great  spending  of  savings.  The 
great  rush  of  military  expense  has  floated  many  a 
poverty-stricken  family  and  given  it  money  and  inter- 
est and  Ufe. 

The  vigour  of  the  Russian  Government  at  once 
became  evident  and  was  well  exemphfied  by  the  action 
as  regards  vodka  and  beer.  In  no  other  country  in  the 
world  could  drinking  be  stopped,  as  it  were,  by  a  stroke 
of  the  Monarch's  pen.  It  has  always  been  said  that 
vodka  afforded  so  much  revenue  that  the  Tsar  would 
never  take  really  active  steps  to  suppress  it.  But, 
here,  in  the  midst  of  the  greatest  financial  need,  he 
sacrificed  an  enormous  revenue  in  order  to  save  and 
strengthen  his  people  in  the  time  of  danger.  To-day 
the  shutters  are  up  in  every  Government  monopoly 
shop  of  the  vast  Russian  Empire.  It  is  a  stupendous 
fact. 

It  is  sad  to  see  so  many  wounded  soldiers  who  have 


S6  RUSSIA   AND   THE  WORLD 

lost  two  or  three  fingers.  It  seems  trifling  compared 
with  body  wounds,  but  in  reality  the  loss  of  fingers  is 
more  pitiful.  It  means  an  end  to  useful  toil,  an  end 
also  to  shouldering  the  rifle  for  the  Motherland.  That 
is  what  war  means  economicaUy ;  the  loss  of  labouring 
hands  in  the  building  of  the  State.  Russia  was  taken 
in  the  midst  of  things  by  this  war.  How  many  railways 
she  was  constructing,  how  many  towns  she  was  build- 
ing! 

All  lies  idle  now  as  I  write,  and  the  autumn  rains 
drench  down  on  thousands  of  scaffoldings  and  melan- 
choly heaps  of  bricks  and  mortar,  left  as  they  were  on 
the  day  of  mobilisation.  It  is  interesting  to  speculate 
how  the  contracts  are  being  fulfilled  on  the  Central 
Asian  Railway,  and  on  the  Altai  Railway.  The  Aus- 
trian and  German  prisoners  of  war  are  being  drafted 
on  to  the  work,  according  to  the  Russian  papers.  A 
number  of  these  unfortunate  Teutons  will  taste  the 
sorrows  of  a  Siberian  winter.*  They  must  take  the 
place  of  those  who  are  fighting. 

*By  February  1915  there  were  over  200,000  Austrian  and  German 
prisoners  in  Siberia.  Even  far-away  Yakutsk,  with  a  winter  where  60°  of 
frost  is  nothing  unusual,  has  its  hundred  or  so.  There  are  several  thousand 
at  Irkutsk,  at  Barnaul,  at  Krasnoyarsk,  at  Tashkent.  They  have  the 
hardest  time  of  all  prisoners  since  the  Russian  standard  of  living  is  so  low 
and  the  rigour  of  the  climate  so  unexampled.  It  is  reported  that  many 
Germans  have  expressed  their  gladness  to  be  captured  and  so  out  of  the 
struggle.  But  if  so  they  did  not  know  what  was  in  store  for  them  —  the 
task  of  replacing  industrially  those  who  have  been  taken  from  Siberia  to 
fight. 


THE  ECONOMIC   ISOLATION  OF   RUSSIA     57 

It  is  astonishing  to  think  of  it.  Practically  all  the 
able-bodied  men  of  the  immense  tract  of  Russia  and 
Siberia  are  now  on  the  German  and  Austrian  frontier. 
Their  customary  work  all  remains  behind !  They  have 
not  a  thought  for  it.  Their  eyes  look  ever  forward  to 
Berlin  and  Vienna.  Here  at  Koshedari,  where  I  write, 
thirty  miles  from  the  Nieman,  I  watch  the  fresh  troops 
still  coming  in  every  day  from  Russia.  The  trains  do 
not  suffice  to  take  them,  they  go  forward  on  foot,  on 
horseback,  in  wagons  and  carts,  with  food  supphes, 
with  saddles,  with  fodder,  with  officers,  baggage  and 
equipments.  They  are  all  in  clean  and  unfrayed  uni- 
forms, the  faces  are  fresh  and  simple;  a  contrast  to 
those  who  return  from  the  front,  all  dust  and  mud, 
their  faces  set,  their  eyes  glaring.  What  confidence 
there  is  among  the  soldiers !  Youngsters  with  faint 
down  on  their  lips  and  cheeks  come  prancing  past  on 
their  horses,  holding  their  black  Cossack  lances  with 
the  assurance  of  men  who  have  spent  all  their  lives 
fighting.  Their  officers  look  much  more  resourceful 
and  able  than  ever  they  did  in  peace.  The  war  has 
made  them. 

They  all  go  forward  to  death  or  victory.  The  river 
of  Time  has  reached  the  rapids,  and  the  smooth  current 
of  existence  has  reached  Niagara.  Boys  have  become 
men ;  young  men  middle-aged  men ;  middle-aged  men 
old  men.    They  all  fly  to  destiny. 


IX 

On  the  River  Niemen 

Grodno,  on  the  River  Niemen,  is  one  of  those 
miserable  towns  of  the  Jewish  Pale,  crowded  with 
a  poverty-stricken  and  slatternly  humanity.  Panic 
has  ranged  there  ever  since  the  German  invasion. 
First  it  was  crowded  with  penniless  refugees  from 
Suvalki  and  the  country  round  about,  and  then,  in 
its  turn,  its  own  people  began  to  flee.  Nearly  all  the 
women  and  children  left  the  town.  The  streets  are 
crowded  with  Russian  soldiers,  who  outnumber  the 
rest  of  the  population  by  twenty  to  one.  The  shops 
are  sold  out  of  half  their  merchandise,  for  the  soldiers 
buy  up  everything  edible.  One  passenger  train  a  day 
leaves  for  Vihia  and  one  for  Warsaw,  and  they  are 
packed  with  refugees.  Six  or  seven  trains  of  soldiers 
leave  every  day  to  reinforce  the  troops  at  Lodz  and 
Petrokof .  Trains  of  wounded  arrive ;  horse  and  motor 
wagons  of  them  arrive  by  the  road. 

I  saw  many  soldiers'  funeral  services  held  in  the 
little  wooden  churches  put  up  in  the  hospital  yards. 
Here  lay  the  dead  warriors  in  their  open  coffins,  with 
crowns  on  their  heads,  their  faces  like  marble.     Scores 

s8 


ON  THE   RIVER  NIEMEN  59 

of  soldiers,  chance  passers  by,  held  candles  and  stood 
round  the  dead  ones  and  crossed  themselves  and  kissed 
the  marble  faces  a  last  good-bye.  "How  did  this  one 
die?  How  did  this  one  die?"  I  heard  in  whispers. 
"Shrapnel,  shrapnel"  came  the  whispered  answer. 
The  coffins  were  lifted  by  the  soldiers,  a  dozen  for  each 
coffin,  and  hoisted  on  the  shoulders  —  the  wood  that 
held  the  dead  lay  against  the  cheeks  of  the  Kving  as 
the  procession  went  out  through  the  town,  with  stand- 
ards and  standard-bearers,  and  priests  in  their  vest- 
ments. Many  of  the  soldiers  taking  part  in  the  service 
were  those  who  had  not  yet  been  under  fire,  but  who 
were  going  forward  that  very  night.  The  idea  of  how 
soon  they  might  be  white  and  dead,  like  those  they 
carried,  must  have  crossed  their  minds;  but  death 
calms  a  Russian,  it  does  not  unnerve  him.  The 
soldiers'  faces  were  calm  and  steadfast. 

This  was  a  Sunday  afternoon ;  all  day,  all  evening, 
all  night  it  rained.  I  spent  many  hours  at  the  railway 
station  watching  the  trains  go  off;  watching  German 
prisoners  being  brought  in;  talking  to  the  wounded, 
and  being  myself  cross-questioned  by  a  poUce  agent, 
who  thought  me  a  suspicious  character.  About  ten 
o'clock  I  walked  through  the  town  to  see  what  might 
be  going  on.  There  in  the  ghetto  I  saw  a  touching 
sight.  A  score  of  carts  had  come  in  from  the  country 
and  the  battlefield,  not  the  ordinary  carts  with  tilts, 
but  those   long,   narrow  contrivances  on  which   the 


6o  RUSSIA  AND   THE  WORLD 

peasant  timber  men  brought  from  the  forest  to  the 
sawmill  whole  pine  logs — twenty  of  these  on  loose  and 
blundering  wheels  were  clattering  over  the  cobbles  and 
bumps  and  holes  of  a  poor  street.  In  them  lay  wounded 
soldiers  wrapped  in  brown  blankets,  just  as  they  had 
been  picked  up  from  the  field  of  victory.  Every  twenty 
paces  the  carts  stopped  in  order  that  the  wounded 
might  rest  from  the  terrible  jolting,  and  then  from  out 
the  poor  houses  in  the  vicinity  the  population  darted 
and  asked  questions. 

There  was  a  little  crowd  of  ragged  Jews  round  each 
cart,  and  the  wounded  sat  up  and  talked,  those  who 
could  sit  up.  The  Jews  brought  white  rolls,  and  laid 
them  in  the  straw  by  the  soldiers'  sides,  and  they  put 
cigarettes  in  the  soldiers'  mouths  and  lit  them  —  many 
of  the  soldiers  had  no  use  of  their  arms.  Poor  wounded, 
their  brown  blankets  were  soaked  through,  their  voices 
hoarse  with  cold,  their  faces  pinched  and  bloodless  — 
but  they  tried  to  chuckle  and  laugh  and  tell  us  how  they 
had  been  beating  the  Germans  !  And  the  crowd  cried, 
one  by  one,  "Have  you  heard  of  ours?"  "Have  you 
heard  of  ours?"  For  the  Jews  also  have  their  kin  in 
the  battle. 

The  Russians  have  driven  the  Germans  back  from 
all  this  country  of  the  Nieman  Valley.  It  was  difficult 
fighting  from  Insterburg  to  the  Nieman  and  back  again, 
but  retreating  or  advancing  the  Russians  showed 
themselves  superior  to  the  Germans  in  courage  and 


ON  THI^  RIVER  NIEMEN  6i 

verve  and  military'  resource.  They  had  to  fight  against 
a  better  equipped  army,  an  army  a  hundred  times 
better  educated,  against  better  guns  and  better  science, 
but  won  by  virtue  of  the  personal  religion  in  the  soldier, 
and  the  overwhelming  moral  justness  of  the  cause. 
"Thrice  is  he  arm'd  that  hath  his  quarrel  just." 

The  Russians  got  as  far  into  East  Prussia  as  Allen- 
stein  at  the  beginning  of  the  war.  They  won  battles, 
they  ravaged  the  country,  they  sent  a  rumour  of  terror 
before  them  to  Berlin.  But  they  walked  into  many 
traps,  lost  great  numbers  of  men,  and  blazed  away 
a  great  quantity  of  precious  ammunition.  Impetuous 
General  Ranenkampf,  whose  brother  is  a  German 
general  on  the  other  side,  in  fact  Governor  of  Konigs- 
berg,  is  reported  to  have  said  :  "  Cut  my  right  hand  off 
if  we  are  not  in  Berlin  by  Christmas."  Berlin  was  a 
long  way  to  go,  especially  for  the  brave  but  simple 
Russians.  Many  hard  days  and  retreats  and  terrible 
sanguinary  battles  were  in  store,  and  Christmas  in  the 
trenches  —  in  trenches  mostly  dug  in  Russian  earth. 
An  enormous  number  of  Russian  prisoners  were  taken 
at  the  battle  of  the  Mazurian  lakes  near  Oesterode.  A 
man  in  Konigsberg  watched  the  Russian  prisoners 
march  past  for  four  hours  and  three  quarters.  Many 
ofl&cers  were  killed,  several  generals,  and  a  multitude 
of  common  soldiers.  The  German  General  von  Hin- 
denburg  was  greatly  honoured,  the  Germans  mightily 
elated.    The  Grand  Duke  Nicholas  and  his  armies  were 


62  RUSSIA   AND   THE  WO)RLD 

chased  out  of  Germany  altogether,  and  the  hot  Ger- 
man pursuit  did  not  cease  till  the  Russians  turned  at 
bay  fifty  miles  to  the  Russian  side  of  the  frontier. 

The  Germans  doubtless  were  much  cheered  by  the 
Russian  disappearance,  and  it  was  a  great  thing  to  be 
able  to  tell  their  public  that  not  one  of  the  enemy  re- 
mained on  German  soil.  But  their  victory  was  also  a 
delusion.  They  in  their  turn  underestimated  the 
strength  of  the  enemy,  and  dreamed  perhaps  of  taking 
Vilna  on  the  rush. 

Or  perhaps  they  sought  to  divert  Russian  attention 
whilst  they  developed  their  forces  for  the  attack  of 
Warsaw  and  of  the  rehef  of  Pshemisl.  In  any  case, 
their  sharp  defeat  on  the  bank  of  the  Niemen  could 
hardly  have  entered  into  their  plans.  They  pursued 
the  Russians  back  to  the  Russian  bases  —  keeping  to 
the  high  road  and  to  the  railroad,  and  concentrating 
all  their  efforts  to  gain  the  other  side  of  the  Niemen, 
and  so  pierce  the  centre  of  the  defence.  But  the  Rus- 
sians turned  and  drove  them  back,  at  Simno  and  Sred- 
niki  and  Druskenniki  and  Sein,  villages  to  the  north 
of  Grodo.  One  who  watched  the  battle  at  Sredniki 
tells  thus  of  the  struggle : 

"It  began  to  be  said  that  the  enemy  were  nearing 
us  in  immense  strength,  and  that  they  would  attack  us 
at  the  fording  of  the  river.  At  three  in  the  afternoon 
the  firing  began,  and  in  an  hour  fighting  became  general, 
all  efforts  of  the  Germans  being  concentrated  on  that 


ON  THE  RIVER  NIEMEN  63 

point  of  the  river  where  it  is  joined  by  the  tributary, 
the  Dubissa.  On  the  steep  diff  of  the  right  bank 
moaned  the  Russian  howitzers;  down  below  on  the 
sand  of  the  river  shore  the  field  artillery  was  at  work, 
and  on  the  other  side  of  the  river,  covered  by  the 
artillery  fire,  the  Russian  foot  heroically  repulsed  the 
Germans,  who  for  their  part  were  making  superhuman 
efforts  to  break  through  to  the  shore.  The  battle  was 
fought  all  night  —  right  till  the  dawn.  The  sounds 
of  the  quick-firing  guns  and  of  the  cannon  and  the 
rifle  shots  mingled  in  one  long,  uninterrupted  thunder 
roll  the  whole  night  long.  But  twice  above  the  tumult 
was  heard  from  afar  the  cheering  of  the  Russian 
regiments  charging  the  enemy  and  driving  them  back. 
The  fires  from  burst  shells  lit  up  the  field  of  battle,  and 
from  many  little  hills  and  cliffs  of  the  district  it  was 
possible  to  look  down  on  the  conflict,  and  see  it  as 
clearly  as  if  it  were  being  enacted  on  the  palm  of  the 
hand. 

At  the  faint  light  of  dawn  the  fighting  became  less 
vigorous  and  gradually  died  down,  and  there  succeeded 
a  strange  silence,  broken  only  by  occasional  rifle  shots 
and  far-away  shouts.  The  air  still  throbbed  and 
thrummed  as  with  a  metal  voice,  but  the  thunder  of 
battle  had  ceased.  The  Germans  fled  with  the  night, 
leaving  behind  on  the  battlefield  heaps  of  corpses, 
shells,  broken  wagons,  automobiles,  motor-bicycles. 
The  sun  came  up  brightly,  and  silvered  with  his  beams 


64  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

the  waters  of  the  Niemen,  the  yellow-leaved  drooping 
forests,  the  gentle  hills,  and  the  extraordinary  battle- 
field. There,  where  dogs  howled  and  innumerable 
ravens  croaked  and  fluttered,  lay  thousands  of  dead, 
face  downward,  face  uppermost,  some  as  if  they  were 
sleeping,  others  as  if  searching  to  find  something  in 
the  earth,  in  heaps,  in  the  trenches,  behind  mounds, 
mixed  up  with  guns  and  swords  and  helmets.  So  the 
sun  saw  what  had  happened  between  his  going  down 
and  his  rising  again. 

The  Tsar  sets  out  for  the  front,  and  with  the  excite- 
ment of  his  possible  advent  at  any  point  the  efforts  of 
generals  and  officers  and  men  are  doubled.  So  the 
Germans  are  driven  back,  once  more  the  Russian 
troops  cross  the  frontier. 

The  Militia  is  called  out  to  stand  in  guarded  occupa- 
tion of  the  country  whilst  the  eager  troops  go  on. 

The  refugees  return;  in  many  cases  to  ruined 
homes,  burned  farms,  and  sacked  villages,  but  they  do 
not  weep  over  it.  '  A  month  ago  I  was  a  rich  man,' 
said  a  Pole  to  me.  'I  had  a  large  pension  establish- 
ment on  the  Nieman,  and  many  people  came  to  me  for 
their  summer  holidays.  Now  I  have  nothing  but  what 
I  stand  in ;  you  see.  Still,  I'll  build  it  again.  If  the  war 
stops,  I'll  borrow  money  and  build  it  again.'  " 


An  Aeroplane  Hunt  in   Warsaw 

The  aeroplanes  sail  in  and  out  of  the  light  clouds, 
their  stately  progress  Hke  that  of  cranes  passing  over 
high  mountains,  and  down  below,  on  all  the  street 
comers  of  Warsaw,  people  stand  and  gaze  at  them  all 
day  long,  pointing,  gesticulating,  looking  through  field- 
glasses.  Suddenly,  one  of  these  human  birds  in  the 
sky  stops  in  its  steady  flight  and  staggers  and  falls, 
and  a  thousand  people  in  the  city  below  see  it  faUing. 

All  at  once  there  is  a  great  rush  and  many  cries — 
"This  way  is  quicker,  this  way  quicker,"  and  every- 
body rushes  in  the  straightest  line  possible  for  the 
point  where  it  seemed  the  flying-machine  had  fallen.  A 
moment  before  in  the  street,  people  were  merely  walk- 
ing past,  or  standing  and  staring;  a  moment  later 
every  one  was  running  in  one  direction  as  if  possessed. 

Out  of  the  restaurants  and  the  cafes  dashed  the 
officers  having  their  dinner  and  with  them  their  ladies, 
and  jumped  into  waiting  motor-cars  and  followed  the 
crowd.  Every  cab  was  taken.  People  crowded  on  to 
every  vehicle  going  in  the  right  direction,  and  there 
were  many  droshkies  having  as  many  as  a  dozen  or 

6s 


66  RUSSIA  AND   THE  WORLD 

fifteen  passengers  standing  on  them.  I  was  running 
with  my  knapsack  on  my  back.  Street  after  street 
we  traversed,  the  further  we  went  the  denser  the  crowd. 
Out  of  the  houses  came  women  without  their  hats,  and 
many  children.  PoHcemen  left  their  posts,  hawkers 
their  stalls,  barbers  came  out  in  their  aprons,  Jews  ran 
in  their  square  hats  and  black  cloaks,  students,  school- 
boys, fifty  thousand  of  them,  increasing  every  moment. 
When  we  came  to  a  cul-de-sac,  some  climbed  the  palings 
and  ran  across  unoccupied  building  plots ;  others  went 
round  and  were  in  time  to  race  the  paling  climbers  at 
the  other  end.     It  was  a  regular  steeplechase. 

Motors  went  coughing  by,  hooting  with  their  syrens, 
tintinabulating,  trumpeting.  Horsemen  pranced  along- 
side. Only  half  the  people  knew  what  they  were  after. 
A  panting,  breathless  student  ran  past  me  carrying  a  T- 
square  in  his  hand,  but  having  no  hat  on  his  head.  He 
relapsed,  into  a  walk,  and  stopped  to  ask  me  what  was 
the  matter,  he  for  his  part  had  not  the  least  notion! 

After  about  two  miles,  we  issued  from  the  city  and 
came  on  to  the  open  plains  of  Poland,  and  there  lay 
the  Russian  Army  encamped  outside  the  city.  Here 
a  Russian  aeroplane  was  making  a  tremendous  clatter 
just  overhead,  and  the  crowd  below  was  running  this 
way  and  that  to  avoid  a  possible  bomb  that  might  be 
thrown  at  them.  They  could  not  be  sure  that  it  was 
not  a  German  aeroplane. 

Here  we  all  turned  up,  on  foot,  in  wagonettes,  in 


AN   AEROPLANE   HUNT   IN   WARSAW     67 

motor-cars,  on  bicycles,  girls,  boys,  men,  and  women — 
and  came  to  a  standstill. 

Where  were  the  fallen  aeroplane  and  the  presumably 
dead  Germans?    Nobody  knew. 

Some  rushed  this  way,  some  that.  Some  said  :  "  It's 
over  there,"  some  others,  "it's  over  here."  There  was 
plenty  of  room,  and  we  all  swarmed  over  the  plain  as  if 
we  had  come  out  for  a  picnic.  The  Cossacks  from  the 
encampment  pranced  about.  The  crowd  did  not  feel 
very  disappointed.  Something  was  going  on  some- 
where. I  jumped  a  trench  full  of  wet  mud  and  climbed 
on  to  the  rampart  opposite.  It  was  crowded  with 
people  all  the  way  along,  all  disputing  the  merits  of 
the  situation.  One  man  held  that  a  bomb  had  been 
thrown  from  a  German  aeroplane.  Another  held  that 
there  had  been  a  duel  in  the  air.  A  third,  a  Jew,  main- 
tained that  the  Russians,  not  knowing  their  business 
properly,  had  shot  down  one  of  their  own  aircraft. 

The  Russian  officers  looked  with  astonishment  on 
the  crowd  that  had  come  out  and  invaded  their  terri- 
tory. Suddenly  an  order  was  given  to  the  Cossacks : 
"Chase  all  these  people  back  again  !"  Whrr-pp  !  Six 
Cossacks  brought  their  horses  round  and  started  for- 
ward in  a  gallop  together. 

The  mob  screamed  and  bolted.  Never  have  I  seen 
such  a  rush.  They  went  like  blown  leaves.  It  was 
difficult,  however,  to  get  down  quickly  from  the  ram- 
part.   A  Polish  girl  near  me  tripped,  and  dived  head 


68  RUSSIA  AND   THE   WORLD 

foremost  into  the  mud  in  the  trench  and  lay  there 
a  minute  as  in  a  comic  picture.  When  she  crawled 
up  the  bank  the  people  stopped  in  their  flight  to  laugh 
at  her,  for  her  face  was  covered  with  yellow  mud  and 
wet  mud  was  dripping  from  her  nose. 

But  it  was  not  a  pogrom.  The  Cossacks  were  kind, 
and  the  crowd  of  skedaddling  black  figures  laughed  as 
well  as  screamed.  Then  more  Cossacks  came  up  and 
started  driving  us  back  in  earnest.  Those  who  had 
come  in  cabs  jumped  back  and  ordered  the  drivers  to 
take  them  home  again,  and  the  motors  swung  round 
and  bore  their  would-be  sightseers  away.  Those  on 
foot  followed,  the  whole  50,000  of  them  and  more, 
flocking,  rushing,  still  asking  questions  —  "  What  was 
it?  Have  the  Germans  come?  Only  an  aeroplane? 
Whose?  No,  never?"  and  so  on.  As  we  went  back 
we  met  hundreds  and  thousands  on  their  way  to  the 
fields.  They  also  asked  —  "  What  is  it  ?  Where  is  it  ?  " 
And  we  cried  —  "Back!  back!"  And  some  said  — 
"The  Cossacks  are  coming  !"  and  others  said  —  "The 
Germans !   the  Germans  !" 

Still  fatuous  crowds  gathered  round,  simple  people 
who  were  asking  one  another  what  was  the  matter,  and 
those  on  the  outside  pushed  and  punched  and  strained 
to  see  the  corpses  they  thought  were  in  the  centre. 
Even  the  police  were  befooled  into  cutting  their  way 
through  these  onion-Hke  masses  to  see  what  was  in  the 
centre.    But  they  were  onion  right  through. 


AN  AEROPLANE   HUNT  IN  WARSAW    69 

I  got  back  to  the  place  I  started  from.  But  all  the 
rest  of  the  evening  in  Warsaw  crowds  kept  forming 
round  people  supposed  to  be  "in  the  know."  And 
still  you  heard  the  question  —  "What  was  it  happened 
this  afternoon?" 

The  true  answer  was  that  a  German  aeroplane  had 
been  shot  down  by  the  Russians,  and  came  to  earth 
ten  miles  away. 

That  evening  all  trains  going  south  or  west  were 
cancelled.  The  Vienna  station  was  shut  up.  The 
Governor  issued  a  notice  asking  the  people  to  remain 
calm,  since  the  troops  would  defend  Warsaw  to  the 
last  drop  of  blood.  The  newspapers  held  that  Warsaw 
was  calm  and  confident.  Next  day,  Sunday,  the  faint 
soimds  of  distant  firing  were  heard.  Crowds  went  out- 
side the  city  and  heard  the  sounds  more  distinctly. 
They  also  saw  the  wounded  being  brought  in. 

On  Monday  we  listened  to  the  desultory  thunder  of 
cannon.  Going  to  the  city  to  post  my  daily  letters,  I 
found  every  post-office  was  closed  and  was  informed 
that  the  post  had  retired  to  Moscow.  I  went  across 
the  Vistula  and  out  to  the  suburb  of  Praga.  There 
was  a  post  there,  but  everything  had  to  be  written  in 
Russian  and  the  Censor  must  initial  it.  Letters  could 
be  handed  in  at  11  p.m.     I  got  nothing  through. 

On  Tuesday,  the  British,  French,  and  Belgian  Con- 
sulates closed  their  doors,  the  banks  shut,  scarcely  any- 
one would  give  change  for  paper  money.    There  was  no 


70  RUSSIA  AND   THE   WORLD 

bread  in  the  bakers'  shops,  scarcely  any  milk  to  be  ob- 
tained at  the  dairies  —  at  the  cafes  only  black  coffee. 
The  cannon  sounded  much  louder.  The  papers  held 
there  was  no  cause  for  alarm.  All  the  same,  removing 
vans  began  to  appear  in  the  streets.  Many  shops 
remained  padlocked  all  day ;  other  shops  started  sales. 

On  Wednesday  the  fighting  was  more  continuous  and 
insistent.  It  lasted  all  night,  and  it  was  difficult  to 
sleep  for  the  sound  of  the  cannon.  The  schools  were 
dismissed.  The  Government  theatres  closed.  The 
people  left  the  city  in  great  numbers  and  swarmed 
literally  on  to  the  roofs  of  trains  going  to  Moscow  and 
Vilna.  The  Governor  issued  a  notice,  posted  on  all  the 
walls  —  "Anyone  injuring  the  telephonic  or  telegraphic 
connections  will  be  shot  without  trial. ^'  Enormous 
crowds  waited  at  the  Viensky  Station  and  listened  to 
the  battle  going  on  beyond  the  city. 

I  went  to  a  little  Polish  theatre  and  saw  an  amusing 
political  comic  opera,  in  which  figured  Wilhelm  as  Alex- 
ander of  Macedon  and  two  twin  German  generals,  both 
as  Napoleon ;  the  other  characters  were  Miss  Warsaw, 
Moses,  a  Jew,  a  French  soldier,  a  Highlander  in  kilts, 
a  Russian  bogateer,  and  Austria,  a  scantily  dressed 
woman,  with  brass  cases  over  her  breasts  and  a  black 
eagle  painted  between  ;  on  her  head  was  a  brass  casque 
and  she  danced  the  tango  with  the  Kaiser.  One  of 
the  funniest  things  of  the  evening  was  a  Pogrom  Dance 
performed  by  the  Kaiser.    First  a  girl  came  in  and 


AN  AEROPLANE   HUNT  IN  WARSAW     71 

danced  a  Polish  dance.  Then  the  Kaiser  jumped  up 
and  roared,  "Away  with  that;  accept  our  German 
culture."  Then  four  marionette  babies  were  fixed  on 
the  stage  and  the  Kaiser  did  a  War  Dance  round  them, 
threatening  with  his  sword  and  roaring.  When  it 
was  all  over  the  AlHes  marched  past  singing  the  Pohsh 
Marseillaise.  The  audience  stood  up  and  cheered  and 
cheered  again,  calling  back  the  dancers  and  actors  to 
repeat  the  rarely  sung  anthem.  As  a  background  to 
the  cheering  and  singing  was  the  never-silent  rumble 
of  the  cannon. 

All  night  and  all  next  day  the  cannon  sounded  more 
and  more  threatening,  and  we  began  to  ask  ourselves 
when  would  shells  begin  to  drop  in  the  city.  Our 
thoughts  were  turned  in  a  different  direction,  however. 
On  Thursday  night  an  aeroplane  sailed  over  the  city 
and  dropped  a  bomb  which  fell  in  Wolf-street,  destroyed 
the  top  storey  of  a  tobacconist's  shop,  and  shattered 
sixty  or  seventy  windows.  On  Friday  morning  crowds 
turned  up  here  to  look  at  the  torn  roof  and  ruined  walls 
and  windows.  A  policeman  arrested  me  as  a  suspicious 
character,  and  I  had  to  go  to  the  police  station  and 
satisfy  the  preestaf.  This  was  the  third  time.  Ni- 
tchevo! 

In  the  afternoon,  after  dinner,  I  went  into  my  hotel 
room  and  lay  down  and  read  the  papers.  Presently  I 
began  to  consider  the  cannonade  and  ask  myself  the 
significance  of  the   increasingly   loud   reports,   when 


72  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

suddenly  there  was  an  overwhelming  splashing  explo- 
sion just  by.  I  rushed  out  again.  People  were  running 
hither  and  thither,  and  overhead  was  a  German  aero- 
plane. Soldiers  fired  volleys  at  it;  the  public,  in 
fright,  tried  to  avoid  being  directly  under  the  machine. 
No  one  could  say  where  the  bomb  had  fallen.  We 
watched  the  aeroplane  fly  away  unhurt.  I  went  at 
once  to  the  Vienna  station,  and  was  within  one  hundred 
yards  of  it  when  another  explosion  occurred,  and  the 
crowd  of  sightseers  came  running  towards  me.  This 
time  four  soldiers  and  four  horses  had  been  killed, 
just  at  the  station.  The  mob  was  panic-stricken, 
howling  and  shrieking.  As  I  stood  by  a  telegraph 
pole,  a  girl  in  hysterics  clutched  my  overcoat,  and 
yelled.  "There's  not  the  slightest  danger,"  said  I. 
But  as  some  hundreds  of  soldiers  started  firing  into  the 
air,  she  broke  into  sobs  and  threw  her  arms  about. 

The  aeroplane  kept  fairly  low  and  went  along  Mar- 
shalkovsky,  the  Piccadilly  of  Warsaw,  and  as  it  went  it 
seemed  to  drive  all  manner  of  traffic  along  with  it.  A 
general  in  a  motor-car  came  up  and  shouted  to  the 
people,  "Home!  Home!  Don't  wait  upon  the  order 
of  your  going  ..."  It  was  a  mauvais  quart  d'heure 
for  Marshalkovsky.  But  presently  the  aviators,  after 
daringly  returning  and  circling  over  the  station,  turned 
away  westward  and  got  back  to  the  German  camp. 
The  crowds  returned  to  their  old  standing  places,  and 
there  began  a  murmur  of  conversation  that  filled  whole 


AN  AEROPLANE   HUNT   IN   WARSAW     73 

streets.  Warsaw  is  certainly  a  city  that  can  be  terror- 
ised. On  the  whole,  there  was  more  to  fear  from  the 
running  crowd  than  from  the  German  "bombists." 
The  roll  of  the  cannon  goes  on.  If  the  Germans  came 
in  there  would  be  a  bad  state  of  affairs,  but  in  order 
to  come  in  they  have  to  defeat  an  immense,  brave 
Russian  army.  It  is  also  a  matter  of  the  effectiveness 
of  the  big  German  guns.  When  the  weather  turns  wet, 
it  is  difficult  to  get  these  guns  along.  If  it  remains  dry 
and  clear,  as  to-day,  there  is  bound  to  be  more  trouble. 
As  I  revised  these  lines,  there  was  quiet  again.  The 
Germans  had  been  defeated.  The  bombs  were  their 
parting  shots. 


XI 

The  First  Battle  of  Warsaw 

On  the  Sunday  after  the  aeroplane  hunt  in  Warsaw 
I  saw  the  cHmax  of  the  great  battle  that  foiled  the  first 
German  attempt  on  the  city. 

The  German  force  that  ran  the  Russians  back  from 
East  Prussia  to  the  River  Niemen,  and  which  was  in 
turn  driven  back  by  the  Russians,  had  evidently  not 
been  a  strong  one,  and  its  operation  on  Russian  soil 
was  only  a  diversion.  Whilst  Russian  attention  was 
fixed  on  North- West  Poland  a  really  important  develop- 
ment was  taking  place  in  South- West  Poland.  Here 
the  German  and  Austrian  armies  were  accumulating 
and  rolling  out  like  a  rising  thunderstorm  on  the  horizon 
of  Warsaw.  Of  course,  directly  the  Germans  were 
driven  back  in  the  north  one  looked  to  the  angle  where 
lie  Cracow  and  Breslau  for  the  next  big  fight,  but  it 
only  needed  two  days  to  show  that  the  Germans  and 
Austrians  were  coming  forward  from  their  own  terri- 
tory with  great  celerity. 

The  whole  of  South- West  Poland  had  been  overrun 
—  Chenstokhof,  Petrokov,  Radom,  Ivangorod,  and 
Lodz  had  all  been  taken.    But  for  the  fact  that  it  is 

74 


THE  FIRST   BATTLE  OF  WARSAW     75 

necessary  to  keep  this  great  nervous  mixed  population 
of  Warsaw  calm,  considerable  mention  of  these  facts 
must  have  been  made  in  dispatches.  The  German 
advance  on  Warsaw  nullified  for  the  time  being  the 
Russian  successes  on  the  road  to  Cracow.  It  caused 
a  general  retirement  of  the  Russians  in  Austria.  Even 
Lemberg  was  in  danger  for  a  while.  A  glance  at  the 
railway  map  will  show  how  important  is  Warsaw, 
holding  as  it  does  all  the  network  of  lines  in  its  grasp. 
The  successive  attempts  of  the  Germans  to  take  it  show 
how  highly  they  would  prize  the  capture. 

On  the  final  Sunday  of  the  first  great  battle  I 
wandered  outside  Warsaw  and  came  to  a  deserted  hut, 
on  the  roof  of  which  I  sat  till  nightfall  watching  the 
fight. 

It  is  a  dull  Sunday  and  the  battle  thunder  is  incessant, 
like  a  sort  of  persistent  resentment.  Earth  is  smoking 
upward  to  a  grey-red  sky.  The  whole  grey  western 
sky  has  a  dull  red  glow  in  it,  and  from  the  landscape 
rise  volumes  of  smoke  and  flames  from  burning  farms, 
rise  circles  of  white  smoke  from  shells  just  burst. 
Autumn  is  yellow,  there  is  much  mud  underfoot,  the 
cabbage  fields  lie  aU  trampled  and  stubbed,  the  grey 
wooden  cottages  of  the  PoHsh  peasants  are  either  de- 
serted or  are  taken  up  by  soldiers  for  their  night 
quarters.  On  my  right  is  a  trembling  wood,  on  my 
left  hes  the  grey  high  road  marked  out  by  telegraph 
poles.    None  of  the  public  are  allowed  on  it.    But 


76  RUSSIA  AND   THE  WORLD 

military  motor-cars  tear  along  it  as  if  racing ;  reinforce- 
ments of  foot  march  along  it  to  the  positsi;  lorries  of 
wounded  return  slowly  along  it,  going  with  their  sore 
burdens  to  the  bandaging  point  at  the  outer  city  gate. 
Anon,  the  road  is  empty  and  you  look  along  the  whole 
dreary  stretch  of  it  from  the  foreground,  where  Hes 
the  way  up  to  Warsaw,  to  the  west,  where  it  loses  itseh 
in  dust  and  vapour  and  smoke. 

From  the  north  came  clanging,  metallic  explosions, 
which  sound  as  if  the  cannon  thunder  were  resounding 
from  many  metal  roofs.  From  the  south  come  low, 
bellowing  detonations.  From  the  centre  come  sharp, 
clouting  reports  that  beat  the  air  like  doors  banged  and 
banged  again  —  the  machine-guns'  chatter  and  rattle. 
The  battle  rages  towards  Warsaw  from  the  north-west, 
the  roar  and  murmur  of  battle  growing  and  trembling 
and  raging  forward.  It  sounds  every  now  and  then  as 
if  some  enormous  machine  on  wheels  were  rolling  for- 
ward ponderously  and  irresistibly  towards  the  city. 
Nearer  and  nearer  come  the  bursting  shells.  It  is 
fascinating  beyond  words  to  watch  and  listen. 

A  sentry  came  up  and  questioned  me,  a  pleasant, 
simple  fellow,  who  was  not  afraid  or  absurdly  suspicious. 
I  showed  him  my  papers,  told  him  who  I  was,  and 
offered  him  a  cigarette  —  I  keep  a  supply  of  cigarettes 
for  stray  soldiers  —  and  he  was  quite  cheerful  and 
happy. 

"Yours  are  fighting  well,"  said  he,  "the  English. 


THE   FIRST  BATTLE   OF   WARSAW     77 

I  heard  how  they  have  been  chasing  the  Germans. 
Even  if  they  do  give  us  a  hot  time  here  they  won't 
beat  the  Enghsh.  They  are  a  people,  they  are  a  great 
people." 

"The  Russians  are  doing  splendidly,"  said  I.  "You 
are  the  only  ones  to  have  fought  Germany  in  Germany, 
we  others,  poor  Belgians,  French,  Enghsh,  have  been 
struggling  all  the  time  on  our  own  territory." 

The  sentry  smiled.  "I  was  at  Soldau  and  Leiden- 
burg,"  said  he.  "After  we  got  past  Mlava  we  went 
on  and  on,  and  found  nothing  in  our  way.  We  had 
a  hot  time  coming  back  though.  Their  artillery  is  so 
fine,  and  they  have  so  many  telephones.  We  could 
never  rest  with  our  battery.  Wherever  we  took  it 
they  found  the  range  and  the  mark  at  once." 

"What's  going  to  happen  now?"  I  asked. 

"Don't  know.  We've  been  fighting  them  ten  days 
now,  and  we  make  no  progress.  They  are  very  ob- 
stinate. What  do  they  think  they  are  going  to  do 
here?    They  can't  take  Warsaw." 

"Still  you  retire?" 

"In  places.    There  are  many  spies." 

"How  far  away  are  the  Germans  now?"  - 

"There,  in  the  centre,  about  six  versts"  —  he  pointed 
to  the  long  grey  spectral  high  road.  "I  was  at  the 
front  yesterday  —  that  is  about  two  versts  from  here  — 
and  the  Germans  he  four  versts  farther." 

"And  in  the  North?"  I  asked. 


78  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

"There  I  don't  know.  Nearer  perhaps.  There  the 
Germans  are  advancing.  Their  left  wing  was  beaten 
yesterday,  but  their  right  received  reinforcements  and 
advanced  and  took  possession  of  an  important  ridge." 

The  sentry  went  on,  and  I  remained  with  my  thoughts 
and  the  battle  thunder  all  around.  The  sentry  reported 
my  presence,  and  in  a  while  a  cantankerous  but  smiling 
officer  of  police  came  and  questioned  me  and  warned 
me  off.  I  walked  with  him  a  mile,  however,  and  talked 
to  him.  He  said  the  Russians  were  winning,  and  yet 
every  now  and  then  he  stopped  to  listen  to  the  rattle 
of  the  machine-guns.     I  could  see  him  trembling. 

How  strange !  The  sound  of  battle  drew  me  nearer 
and  nearer,  but  he  evidently  would  have  given  any- 
thing to  be  off  duty  and  out  of  it  all.  Still,  his  orders 
were  to  calm  everybody  he  met,  and  he  assured  me 
I  should  see  thousands  of  German  prisoners  on  the 
morrow. 

And  I  wandered  away  from  him  back  to  the  city. 
It  was  about  five  miles  to  the  outer  gate,  Zastava,  of 
Warsaw,  and  long  before  I  reached  it  I  saw  the  black 
masses  of  the  curious  and  anxious  crowd  held  back 
there  by  the  mounted  police.  These  were  tremulous 
days  for  Warsaw. 

It  was  five  miles  more  to  the  centre  of  the  city  and  a 
restaurant.  At  last  I  reached  the  centre,  and  there, 
as  ever  at  night  time,  all  was  gaiety  and  frivolity,  the 
caf^s  full  to  the  doorways,  the  cinema  shows  glaring 


THE   FIRST  BATTLE   OF   WARSAW     79 

as  in  Tottenham  Court  Road,  the  broad  pavements 
crowded  with  PoHsh  dandies,  with  elegantly  dressed 
women  and  ogHng  girls,  with  gossiping  Jewesses  and 
black-cloaked  Abrahams,  with  hundreds  of  newspaper 
hawkers  selling,  not  only  Polish  sheets,  but  also  The 
Times  and  Le  Matin.  There  are  not  many  English 
here,  but  the  Poles  read  EngHsh  gladly. 

I  had  my  dinner  and  my  coffee  Hstening  to  a  selection 
of  ragtimes. 


XII 

The  Day  of  Victory 

A  DAY  of  victory  or  an  armistice.  Rumour  has  it 
that  the  German  left  flank  has  found  itself  outnumbered 
at  Ivangorod,  and  the  right  flank  has  had  to  retire. 
No  cannon  thunder  in  the  night,  none  in  the  morning, 
but  instead  the  brightest,  warmest  day  of  autumn, 
an  unspent  summer  day  found  by  the  thrifty  year  and 
offered  us  in  the  gloom  of  Russian  October.  The  sun 
shone  brilliantly  to-day,  and  from  all  the  trees,  and  in 
the  open  spaces  from  nothing  at  all,  hung  long  gossamer 
threads.  All  Warsaw  was  waving  in  gentle  gossamer. 
Violence  and  war  were  far  from  Nature's  thoughts. 

It  is  the  Monday  after  my  day  out  in  the  country 
listening  to  the  great  battle.  I  have  been  down  to  the 
Brest  station,  where  the  trains  go  out  to  Moscow.  It 
is  blocked  up  with  fugitives  and  their  hurriedly  packed 
household  effects.  The  more  thunder  of  war  and  the 
more  bombs  thrown  from  the  air,  the  more  people 
resolve  to  flee.  It  is  not,  however,  easy  to  flee;  a 
special  permit  has  to  be  obtained  and  then  a  ticket. 
You  may  wait  all  day  and  still  fail  to  get  a  place  on  the 
train.  The  authorities  close  the  booking  office  directly 
they  have  sold  the  places  on  the  two  outgoing  trains. 

80 


THE  DAY   OF  VICTORY  8i 

On  my  way  back  I  had  a  passage  of  words  with  a 
pohceman  m  black  and  red  and  his  officer  in  buff. 
They  wanted  me  to  go  to  the  pohce  station  and  be 
verified  again.  That  was  because  I  am  tall  and  have 
my  tramping  boots  on,  and  look  unusual.  They 
ought  to  know  that  spies  are  short  and  inconspicuous. 
There  is,  however,  said  to  be  an  enormous  amount 
of  spying  being  done  and  a  day  does  not  pass  but  some 
are  hung  or  shot. 

About  three  o'clock  in  the  afternooi^I  got  back  to 
the  great  high  street  of  Warsaw  —  Marshalkovsky  — 
and,  as  chance  would  have  it,  saw  another  bomb  come 
down  and  explode.  As  I  walked  down  the  street  I 
suddenly  noticed  that  passers-by  began  to  shade  their 
eyes  with  their  hands,  and  look  up  into  the  sunny  sky, 
and  I  looked  with  them. 

A  great  bird  was  hastening  forward  over  the  city  — 
the  shape  of  a  German  eagle  breasting  the  air.  It 
approached  with  great  rapidity  and  was  soon  over  our 
heads.  The  people  began  to  run,  now  to  this  side  of 
the  road  and  now  to  that  —  and  I  myself  crossed  over. 
Two  moments  later  there  was  a  flash  of  smoky  fire  and 
a  deafening  report.  Lumps  of  roof  flew  into  the 
roadway  three  doors  up  from  where  I  was  standing; 
a  bomb  had  fallen  on  the  top  of  my  favourite  cafe,  the 
place  where  I  had  so  often  sipped  my  coffee  and  written 
my  articles. 

Having  discharged  the  bomb,  the  unpausing  aero- 


82  RUSSIA  AND   THE   WORLD 

plane  went  straight  on  across  the  vault  of  the  sky  and 
disappeared. 

An  enormous  crowd  gathered  round  the  cafe  and 
talked  and  questioned.  But  presently  out  of  the 
horizon  into  which  he  had  disappeared  came  the 
Prussian  eagle  once  more  and  approached  with  similar 
velocity.  There  was  a  great  panic  in  the  street,  an 
astonishingly  tremulous  moment.  Even  soldiers  darted 
into  imaginary  shelters,  the  tram-drivers  were  afraid  to 
go  forward  with  their  cars,  cabs  with  their  passengers 
went  whither  the  drivers  fancied.  Every  one  had  an 
intimate  notion  of  what  it  would  be  like  to  be  blown 
to  bits.  Still,  we  might  as  well  have  stood  still.  The 
Germans  aim  the  bombs  at  the  crowds  or  at  important 
buildings,  but  they  do  not  hit  their  marks.  The  bombs 
fall  on  the  just  and  unjust  with  cheerful  impartiality. 
The  one  we  now  feared  fell  two  streets  off  with  a  hollow 
boom,  and  killed  and  injured  six  people  who  did  not 
even  realise  there  was  one  of  the  enemy  overhead. 

It  is  difficult  to  see  what  the  Germans  hope  to  gain 
by  these  isolated  adventures.  Bomb-throwing  will  not 
help  them  either  to  take  the  city  or  to  keep  it  when 
taken.  The  Russians  know  how  to  keep  the  nervous 
population  under  control  in  time  of  excitement,  but  the 
Germans,  if  put  in  possession  of  the  city,  would  not  be 
able  to  restrain  the  dangerous  element,  always  rather 
strong  in  submerged  Warsaw. 

These  single   exploits  are  merely   thrill-producers. 


THE  DAY   OF  VICTORY  83 

The  "bombists"  killed  and  injured  fifty-four  people  one 
day  last  week ;  according  to  latest  accounts  they  killed 
and  injured  twenty  to-day.  At  the  Vienna  station 
one  bomb  explosion  broke  £1,000  worth  of  plate-glass. 
I  have  no  wish  to  minimise  what  they  did,  but  what 
earthly  effect  did  the  outrages  have  on  the  result  of 
the  battle  outside  the  city?  Directly  the  danger  had 
passed  the  people  came  out  again,  and  were  chattering 
and  laughing  and  picking  and  choosing  fragments  of 
plate-glass  to  keep  as  mementoes  —  like  children  who, 
on  the  night  of  the  fifth  of  November,  were  a  little 
frightened  by  the  explosions,  but  who  immensely  enjoy 
gathering  the  squib  cases  and  rocket  sticks  on  the 
morning  after. 

On  the  Tuesday  we  knew  definitely  that  there  was 
victory.  It  was  a  day  of  the  clashing  of  bells  and  of 
hymns  of  praise.  Warsaw  had  been  saved.  Yet  such 
a  wet  and  dreary  day.  The  silence  that  succeeded 
after  the  days  and  nights  of  cannon,  thunder,  and  sus- 
pense was  strange  by  comparison.  It  was  a  pleasure 
to  realize  that  the  post  oflSces  were  opening  again,  that 
the  banks  would  give  out  money,  that  telegrams  would 
be  passed  more  easily,  that  the  Consuls  were  coming 
back  and  the  jeweller's  shops  opening,  and  yet  somehow 
there  was  a  shade  of  regret  as  if  Destiny  and  adventure 
had  passed  us  by. 

This  melancholy,  however,  vanished  when  in  the 
evening  great  numbers  of  troops  returned  to  Warsaw 


84  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

from  the  battlefield.  In  the  soaking  rain  along  the 
dark,  wide  streets  the  Siberian  Cossacks,  my  friends 
of  the  Altai  among  them  probably,  and  with  them  the 
Caucasian  regiments,  returned  at  a  quick  measure.  It 
lasted  for  hours,  but  it  was  not  a  procession.  Every 
horse  was  trotting,  the  miUtary  carts  jogged  along 
quickly.  The  men  were  woebegone,  grimy,  bearded, 
soaked.  They  seemed  too  tired  even  to  tend  their 
horses  properly,  too  tired  to  take  from  the  extended 
hands  of  the  Poles  the  offerings  they  made  of  cigarettes 
and  sweet  cakes  and  bread.  They  had  fought  day  and 
night  for  days,  taking  the  chance  of  death,  and  then 
the  chance  of  death  again,  and  then  again,  seeing  their 
nearest  comrades  blasted  by  shells,  stricken  by  bullets, 
yet  not  having  time  to  reflect  even  on  what  it  meant 
to  lose  so  dear  a  friend  ;  subconsciously  aware  even  in 
the  rush  of  their  valorous  deeds  that  at  any  moment 
fruitful  chance  might  strike  them  down  from  the  ranks 
of  the  striving  and  living  to  the  heaps  of  the  dead. 
They  were  all  lucky  ones,  though  perhaps  in  their 
philosophy  happiest  of  all  were  those  who  perished  in 
the  love  and  service  of  Russia  in  the  war  agamst  an 
evil  foe. 


XIII 

Suffering  Poland  :    A  Belgium  of  the  East 

So  the  first  battle  of  Warsaw  was  won  by  the  Rus- 
sians and  the  Germans  were  driven  back,  and  nearly 
all  the  exchanges  and  minor  engagements  following 
that  battle  were  in  the  Russian  favour.  By  all  ac- 
counts, it  was  the  enthusiasm  and  daring  of  the  peasant 
soldiers  that  saved  Warsaw  from  bombardment  and 
German  occupation. 

The  struggle  over,  the  body  of  Poland  will  rage  back- 
wards and  forwards  for  a  long  time,  and  the  sufferings 
of  the  soldiers  on  both  sides  and  of  the  non-combatants 
will  be  something  unparalleled.  War  is  raged  with  a 
more  elemental  brutality  on  this  side  of  Europe,  for 
the  reason  that  the  land  was  a  poverty-stricken  one  to 
start  with,  and  because  the  Russian  troops  are  more 
used  to  cold  and  hunger,  more  humanly  persistent, 
more  unsparing  of  themselves.  Already  Russia  must 
have  lost  heavily,  but  the  losses  mean  httle  to  her. 
She  is  the  men-millionaire  who  never  feels  poorer, 
however  many  men  she  may  spend.  The  peasants 
themselves  are  deeply  calm  regarding  the  spectacle 
of  suffering  and  death.    Death  does  not  horrify  them ; 

8s 


86  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

on  the  contrary,  the  idea  of  glorious  death  is  spiritual 
meat  and  drink  to  them.  They  love  their  brother 
soldier  alive,  but  when  he  is  dead  he  becomes  something 
holy.  This  makes  the  Russian  almost  invincible. 
The  only  thing  that  could  disturb  the  enthusiasm  of 
the  Russian  troops  would  be  the  idea  that  they  were 
fighting  for  a  wrong  cause.  Cannon  is  not  their 
ultima  ratio.  The  technical  superiority  of  the  Germans, 
who  were  ready  for  war  at  all  points,  is  opposed  and 
held  in  check  by  the  religious  bravery  of  the  Russian 
peasants,  and  by  the  spirit  that  prompts  them  to  think 
that  every  battle  can  be  won  at  the  point  of  the  bayonet. 

But  to  turn  a  moment  from  the  struggle  of  Slavs  and 
Teutons,  there  is  another  spectacle  that  claims  atten- 
tion, and  that  is  the  sufferings  of  the  body  of  Poland, 
over  which  these  terrible  struggles  are  taking  place. 
The  condition  of  the  peoples  of  Poland  is  almost  as  bad 
as  that  of  the  Belgians.  There  is  only  the  difference 
that  Belgium  was  a  prosperous  and  happy  country  to 
start  with,  and  Poland  for  the  most  part  was  miserable 
and  poverty-stricken. 

When  the  Germans  first  invaded  Poland  they  gasped 
at  the  filth  and  poverty  of  the  ghettoes,  at  the  little 
shops  where  there  was  nothing  worth  stealing,  at  the 
wretched  houses  crammed  with  humanity  but  devoid 
of  wealth  and  luxury.  They  surveyed  the  ragged, 
shivering  Jews  with  horror,  and  rather  than  loot  their 
houses  they  set  them  afire.    In  the  first  month  of  the 


SUFFERING  POLAND  87 

war  Poland  suffered  more  from  fire  and  lead  than  from 
robbery.  Indeed,  even  the  border  frays  ceased  for 
a  while,  and  all  German  attention  was  given  to  the 
Russian  invasion  of  Eastern  Prussia. 

It  was  only  after  the  retirement  of  the  Russians  that 
Poland  began  to  suffer  seriously.  Every  one  had  been 
lulled  to  confidence  by  the  Russian  advance  towards 
Konigsberg,  and  when  the  great  retreat  began  the 
pursuing  Germans  came  upon  many  Polish  towns  at  the 
most  unexpected  moment.  The  people,  wakened  up 
in  the  night  by  the  fire  and  tumult  and  thunder  of  war, 
rushed  from  their  beds  into  the  streets,  got  into  the 
line  of  fire  and  were  killed  and  injured  in  great  numbers. 
The  panic  was  terrible.  Many  thousands  of  people 
left  their  homes  and  fled,  without  plan,  without  counsel, 
into  the  wild  country.  There  at  this  moment  are  starv- 
ing Poles  and  Jews  in  great  numbers  wandering  about, 
lost,  shot  at,  accused  of  being  spies,  arrested,  liable  to 
execution.  Some  have  managed  to  get  into  trains  and 
have  gone  to  the  cities  of  the  interior.  Warsaw  alone 
has  50,000  homeless  refugees,  and  probably  every  city 
of  Russia  has  at  least  Poles,  if  not  Jews,  in  its  hospi- 
table care,  besides  a  number  of  wounded  soldiers. 

When  the  Germans  pursued  the  Russian  Army  back 
to  the  River  Nieman  and  advanced  and  occupied 
South-West  Poland,  they  were  bent  on  revenge.  They 
looked  no  longer  disdainfully  on  the  filth  and  poverty 
of  Poland .     Orders  had  evidently  been  given  that  every- 


88  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

thing  serviceable  was  to  be  removed  from  the  country 
—  that  no  rag  that  might  give  warmth  to  the  German 
soldiers  in  the  winter  campaign  was  to  be  left  untaken. 
Following  the  German  Army  came  an  innumerable 
train  of  light  wagons,  at  first  almost  empty,  but  at  last 
filled  —  by  the  process  of  taking  from  her  who  had 
naught  even  that  which  she  had.  At  the  retreat  of 
the  Germans  from  the  Nieman,  the  Russian  airmen 
remarked  on  the  hundreds  and  thousands  of  wagons 
full  of  stolen  goods  traversing  the  country  towards 
Germany,  like  a  sort  of  dark  cloud  moving  over  the 
surface  of  the  land.  Germans,  dead  on  the  battlefield 
below  Warsaw,  were  found  to  be  wearing  the  clothing 
of  PoKsh  peasants  under  their  uniforms.  Some  were 
found  wearing  Russian  boots,  and  many  carried 
women's  cotton  shawls  and  flannel  petticoats. 

In  many  of  the  villages  in  Poland  the  people  have 
buried  their  boots  and  spare  clothes,  with  their  money, 
and  you  are  astonished  to  see  the  Pohsh  peasants 
going  about  with  bare  feet  or  in  straw  slippers.  They 
say  that  the  German  soldiers  come  and  pull  the  boots 
off  their  feet  to  put  into  their  forage  sacks.  Alas! 
the  Germans  are  as  keen  as  terriers  at  finding  things 
that  have  been  buried,  and  the  peasants  when  they 
return  to  villages  forsaken  a  week  before,  find  that  their 
things  have  all  been  dug  up  and  taken  away.  Neces- 
sarily, scarcely  anyone  is  earning  any  wages.  The 
factories  are  all  closed  owing  to  the  lack  of  coal.    Even 


SUFFERING   POLAND  89 

in  Warsaw  you  rarely  see  a  chimney  stack  with  smoke 
issuing  from  it.  And  time  has  been  spared  by  the 
Germans  to  ransack  the  warehouses  of  the  industrial 
cities.  An  onlooker  at  a  large  sugar  factory  saw 
almost  a  thousand  tons  of  sugar  removed  in  one-horse 
wagons,  for  instance.  At  the  town  of  Bzhedin,  a 
sweated  labour  settlement  where  man,  woman,  and  child 
work  all  day  at  the  sewing  of  ready-made  overcoats, 
trousers,  and  so  forth,  the  Germans  took  off  the  whole 
stock,  and  were  as  pleased  as  if  they  had  won  a  battle. 
It  is  robbery,  but  the  sagacious  Germans  disguise  it 
as  purchase,  giving  in  exchange  for  the  requisitioned 
clothing  cheques  printed  in  the  Russian  language  and 
payable  by  the  Russian  Government.  It  is  hoped  that 
the  Jews  especially  will  worry  the  Russians  by  trying  to 
get  some  recognition  of  the  losses  they  have  sustained. 
But  the  Jews,  much  as  they  abhor  the  Russian  rule,  are 
true  to  the  Government  on  the  whole,  and  start  no 
propaganda  likely  to  favour  Germany.  The  Germans 
inspire  them  with  terror.  A  touching  story  is  told 
of  the  Jews  of  Avgustof .  The  Germans  came  towards 
Avgustof  on  a  Saturday,  and  the  poor  Jews  there  are  of 
the  most  pious  type,  who  do  not  light  their  fires  on 
the  Sabbath,  do  no  work,  and  certainly  do  not  travel. 
All  the  Christians  fled  —  the  Jews  in  consternation 
appealed  to  their  Rabbi  for  a  reading  of  Holy  Writ 
on  the  point.  The  Rabbi  not  only  sanctioned  their 
departure,  but  showed  them  an  example  by  going  first. 


90  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD       . 

So,  last  of  all,  the  poor  Jews  crept  out  with  little 
bundles  containing  what  they  felt  they  must  take  with 
them  —  each  Jewish  family  has  something  valuable  in 
the  shape  of  the  metal  candlesticks  which  they  light  on 
Friday  night.  Then  the  Germans  came  into  the  town. 
The  saddest  sights  in  Warsaw  and  Wilna  and  Kief  are 
the  clusters  of  poor,  homeless  Jews  just  come  into  the 
city  with  all  that  remains  to  them  in  their  hands. 

Of  those  who  have  remained  behind  or  who  have 
been  overtaken  by  the  German  invasion  many  have 
been  killed,  many  maimed  by  the  bursting  of  shells. 
Many  have  had  their  houses  burned  over  them.  Many 
have  been  executed  by  the  Germans  as  spies.  Many 
have  died  or  have  become  crazed  through  fright.  In 
several  towns  the  Germans  fixed  up  at  the  street 
corners  corpses  of  well-known  citizens,  in  order  to  warn 
those  who  remained  behind  against  betrayal.  At 
Chenstokhof  the  soldiers  cut  out  the  famous  picture 
of  the  Virgin  from  the  ikon-frame  and  replaced  it  with 
a  portrait  of  the  Emperor  Wilhelm.  This  is  an  exam- 
ple of  grim  German  pleasantry.  They  have  hanged 
alleged  spies  on  the  roadside  crosses  and  peasant 
shrines  of  the  highway.  And  they  have  also  scattered 
from  aeroplanes  proclamations  to  the  Poles  to  the  effect 
that  the  Poles  should  trust  them.  But  the  Poles  having 
fallen  among  thieves  have  little  difficulty  in  deciding 
who  is  truly  their  neighbour.  Russia  is  doing  all  she 
can  to  help  this  poor,  stricken  people. 


XIV 

The  Censorship 

If  there  is  one  city  more  than  another  that  has  had 
plentiful  topics  of  conversation  it  is  Warsaw.  Rumours 
have  fled  along  her  streets  every  day.  Not  once  or 
twice  panic  has  possessed  her  utterly.  Three  times  > 
at  least  before  the  end  of  the  year  it  has  been  threatened 
with  German  occupation  —  three  times  the  Germans 
have  been  beaten  and  hope  has  again  danced  in  the 
breasts  of  the  Poles. 

I  think  perhaps  it  would  have  been  better  to  let  the 
people  of  Warsaw  know,  daily,  the  facts  of  the  Russian 
retreats.  Surprises  are  bad  for  the  nerves,  especially 
the  surprise  of  waking  up  one  morning  and  hearing  the 
cannonade  of  the  enemy  at  the  gates  of  the  city  —  of 
the  enemy  you  thought  were  at  least  a  hundred  miles 
away. 

Not  only  do  the  Warsaw  newspapers  omit  the  facts 
about  their  city,  but  the  newspapers  of  Moscow  give 
daily  more  details  of  the  state  of  Warsaw  than  the 
actual  Warsaw  papers  themselves.  The  post  may  be 
closed  for  days,  all  telegrams  may  be  refused,  and  yet, 
daily,  Moscow  has  intelligence  and  prints  it. 

91 


92  RUSSIA  AND   THE  WORLD 

This  is  effected  by  a  simple  device.  The  Warsaw 
correspondents  write  out  their  articles  and  paragraphs, 
make  up  a  packet,  take  it  down  to  the  Brest  station, 
and  bribe  one  of  the  guards  of  outgoing  Moscow  trains 
to  take  it  to  the  old  capital  and  either  post  it  or  deliver 
it  there. 

Necessarily,  the  Censor  in  Warsaw  under  martial 
law  is  much  more  strict  than  the  Censor  in  Moscow. 
Still,  when  the  Moscow  papers  arrive  two  or  three  days 
after  their  publication  in  Moscow  and  begin  to  be  sold 
in  the  Warsaw  streets,  the  Censor  begins  to  pass  the 
reprint  of  news  from  its  columns. 

The  morning  sheets  of  the  city  are  kept  up  with  tit- 
bits such  as,  "  Since  the  outbreak  of  the  war  many  more 
male  children  than  female  are  being  born.  The  ratio 
in  Warsaw  hospitals  is  about  ten  to  three  of  boys  to 
girls.  This  is  thought  to  be  Nature's  effort  to  put 
right  the  great  waste  of  male  lives." 

I  read:  "The  events  of  the  last  few  days  have 
awakened  the  curiosity  of  the  local  population,  and 
everyone  is  trying  to  learn  the  freshest  news  from  outside 
Warsaw.  So,  behold  the  appearance  of  'walking  news- 
papers' !  Frequenters  of  the  cafes  know  the  type,  who 
give  much  information  just  obtained  from  the  most 
reliable  sources.  Many  people  give  credence  to  these 
stories,  and  hence  arise  and  spread  all  manner  of 
fables." 

This  was  in  the  Warsaw  Morning,  a  paper  that  gave 


THE   CENSORSHIP  93 

no  facts  whatever;  and  no  matter  what  happened  in 
the  city,  what  sound  of  fighting  was  heard,  how  many 
dead  bodies  came  floating  down  the  Vistula,  yet  insisted 
that  nothing  was  happening. 

During  the  war  many  things  have  risen  in  value  as  a 
result  of  scarcity,  and  the  chief  of  them  is  truth.  The 
censorship  is  used  not  only  to  keep  secret  military 
operations,  which  is  its  legitimate  function,  but  also  to 
hide  from  the  public  all  pictures  of  failure.  It  degrades 
joumahsm  almost  to  the  position  of  paid  propaganda. 
Not  only  are  failures  slurred  over  and  defeats  covered 
by  euphemisms,  but  the  successes  of  the  other  side  are 
minimised  and  laughed  at,  and  their  ability  to  hold 
out  is  foohshly  under-estimated.  Commanders  invite 
joumaHsts  to  lend  their  pen  to  the  cause. 

The  best  way  to  help  the  cause  is  by  giving  the  truth 
and  stating  doubts  and  fears  as  well  as  hopes  and 
vaunts.  The  Censor  is  justified  in  eliminating  panic- 
striking  impressions,  or  the  unredeemed  horrible  facts 
of  carnage.  But  he  is  not  justified  in  suppressing  the 
quiet  penetrative  thoughts  of  those  who  are  necessarily 
calmer  in  their  souls  than  those  who  are  in  the  thick  of 
the  fighting.  The  suppression  in  Russia  of  the  Russkoe 
Bogatstvo  and  Zaveti,  radical  and  troublesome  reviews 
though  they  be,  is,  for  instance,  a  little  unfortunate. 
Least  of  all  is  the  Censor  justified  in  permitting  the 
campaign  of  vulgarity  by  which  the  minds  of  the  rabble 
are  being  poisoned.     The  Germans  are  not  clowns,  not 


94  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

vermin,  not  stupid,  not  ridiculous.  They  are  an 
extremely  well  educated,  intelligent,  serious  people. 
Even  if  in  the  long  run  we  overcome  Germany,  and 
humiliate  her,  we  ought  to  know  clearly  what  the 
Germans  were,  and  how  it  was  they  were  thus  beaten. 

The  Germans  are  a  marvellously  patient  race  to 
whom  the  English  owe  much  of  what  is  hardest  in 
themselves.  The  English  are,  on  the  whole,  the  justest, 
fairest,  kindest  people  the  world  has  seen ;  that  is  what 
the  Union  Jack  means  —  fair  play,  honour,  share  and 
share  alike.  The  Russians  are  a  singularly  noble,  wild, 
and  simple  people.  Their  soldiers,  though  capable  of 
excesses,  are  yet  the  purest-minded,  most  religious 
people  in  the  war.  And  yet  Germans,  English,  and 
Russians  are  hideously  and  vulgarly  depicted  in  the 
minds  of  the  common  people  of  the  hostile  nations. 
War  itself  is  stem  and  noble,  but  the  low  campaign  of 
those  whose  minds  nm  to  slanders  only  brings  it  into 
ugliness.  So  many  men  dead,  so  many  dying,  so  many 
suffering  agonies,  so  many  toiling  forward  towards 
death,  so  many  lost  sweethearts,  lost  husbands,  lost 
sons,  so  many  tears  and  prayers,  should  solemnise  the 
time,  and  give  us,  nationally,  a  noble  and  restrained 
literature. 


XV 

The  Soldier  and  the  Cross 

When  the  wounded  soldier  is  brought  to  the  hospital 
and  laid  in  his  bed,  his  first  wish  is  that  the  priest 
may  hold  the  cross  for  him  to  kiss.  The  priest  who 
visits  every  bedside  every  morning  carries  a  little 
cross  in  his  hand,  and  each  poor  soldier  presses  his  lips 
to  the  centre  of  it  and  kisses  it  vehemently. 

War,  to  the  Russian  soldier,  is  a  great  religious 
experience.  "He  liveth  best  who  is  always  ready  to 
die,"  says  a  holy  proverb  of  the  Russians.  And  readi- 
ness to  die  is  the  religious  side  of  war.  The  Russian 
soldier  kills  his  enemy  without  religious  qualm,  yet 
without  hate.  He  does  not  feel  he  is  doing  an  evil 
thing  to  a  fellow  man  —  to  shoot  at  him,  to  charge  at 
him  with  a  bayonet.  The  great  reality  that  confronts 
him  is  not  that  he  may  kill  others,  but  that  he  himself 
may  suffer  terrible  pain  or  may  lose  the  familiar  and 
pleasant  thing  called  life.  In  order  to  face  this  the 
Russian  has  to  dive  down  deep  in  himself  and  find 
a  deeper  self  below  his  ordinary  self;  he  has  to  find 
the  common  spirit  of  Man  below  his  own  ego,  he  has 
to  Hve  in  communion  with  the  fount  of  life  from  which 

95 


96  RUSSIA  AND   THE   WORLD 

his  own  little  stream  of  life  is  flowing.  No  relic  of  the 
war  is  more  precious  than  the  little  loaf  of  holy  bread 
which  the  soldier  saves  from  his  last  communion  before 
going  to  battle  or  going  under  fire  for  the  first  time. 

The  Russian  soldiers  go  to  war  very  much  in  the 
same  spirit  as  the  Russian  pilgrims  go  towards  Jerusa- 
lem. Indeed,  many  a  man  was  just  about  to  start  out 
for  Jerusalem  when  the  war  broke  out  and  he  was 
summoned  to  fight  against  the  Germans.  In  the  fields 
of  East  Prussia  and  of  Poland  he  found  as  veritable  a 
Jerusalem  as  that  he  sought  m  Palestine.  It  is  perhaps 
a  shorter  way  thither. 

The  priests  serving  in  the  army  and  in  the  hospitals 
tell  wonderful  stories  of  religious  experience,  of  touching 
peasant  mysticism,  of  holy  patriotism. 

A  dying  soldier  Hes  on  the  battlefield  and  the  visiting 
priest  thinks  him  too  far  gone  to  receive  the  Holy  Com- 
munion. So  he  says  the  OtkJwdnaya,  the  prayer  for 
the  departing  soul.  Suddenly  the  dying  man  opens 
his  dim  eyes  and  whispers  just  audibly :  "  My  country- 
men, my  dear  countrymen  ...  no,  not  that,  Little 
Father  ...  my   own   one  .  .  .  thou   hast   come    to 


save  me." 


He  tries  to  get  up,  widely  crosses  himself,  that  is, 
from  shoulder  to  shoulder,  and  from  brow  to  chest,  and 
repeats  —  "Thou  hast  come  to  save  me." 

There  is  a  short  confession  as  of  a  child  —  Com- 
munion.   The  soldier  with  a  great  effort  crosses  himself 


THE   SOLDIER  AND   THE   CROSS         97 

once  more,  drops  back  on  the  wet  mud  of  the  battle- 
field, and  slips  into  oblivion,  with  glazed  eyes,  set  lips, 
but  white,  calm  brow.  The  priest  bending  over  him 
lays  a  cross  upon  him,  and  goes  on  to  the  next  suffering 
or  dying  one  upon  the  field. 

The  Russian  religion  is  the  religion  of  suffering  and 
death,  the  religion  that  helps  you  to  meet  suffering 
calmly  and  to  be  always  ready  to  die.  Many  Catholics 
and  Protestants  among  the  Russian  ranks  ask  the 
Orthodox  blessing.  In  the  moment  of  the  ordeal  they 
know  that  true  religion  is  never  divided  against  itself. 

The  war  is  the  great  wind  that  blows  through  our  life, 
so  that  the  things  that  can  be  shaken  may  be  shaken 
down,  and  that  the  things  which  cannot  be  shaken  may 
remain.  Religion  is  never  shaken  down  by  war.  But, 
strange  to  say,  the  logicians  are  shaken  in  their  logic, 
agnosticism  is  shaken,  materialism  is  shaken,  atheism  is 
shaken,  positivism  is  shaken.  The  intellectual  domi- 
nance is  shaken  and  falls,  the  spiritual  powers  are 
allowed  to  take  possession  of  men's  beings. 

"Many  is  the  time,"  said  a  priest  to  me,  "that  an 
officer  has  called  me  to  his  side  and  has  said,  '  I  am  an 
atheist,  I  believe  in  nothing,'  but  I  have  confessed  him, 
and  he  has  emptied  his  life  to  me  —  to  the  very  dregs  — 
and  I  have  put  him  in  Holy  Communion,  and  left  him  all 
melted  and  holy." 

When  the  war  is  over  and  we  give  ourselves  once 
more  to  safe  life  and  comfortable  life,  and  we  believe 


98  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

again  that  nothing  is  more  precious  than  human  life, 
many  will  no  doubt  lose  the  remembrance  of  that  true 
religion  which  was  theirs  in  the  hours  when  they  were 
face  to  face  with  reality.  The  cathedrals  and  the 
churches  will  not  be  so  full,  the  priests  will  relapse  into 
the  routine  of  the  revolving  weeks  of  the  revolving 
Christian  year.  But  still  we  shall  not  have  lost  the 
fruit  of  the  war.  The  war  has  touched  us  as  no  other 
event  could  touch  ;  it  has  gone  deeper,  it  has  got  below 
the  skins  and  surfaces  which  are  affected  by  ordinary 
events,  and  has  stirred  depths  in  the  soul.  In  the 
stress  of  war  parts  of  our  ordinary  superficial  selves 
have  got  carried  down  into  the  depths  of  the  soul. 
Things  that  lay  hidden  in  the  depths  have  been  cast 
up  to  the  surface.  Things  long  hid  have  come  to  light, 
and  will  continue  to  come  to  light  as  in  life  we  go 
through  the  gamut  of  ordinary  spiritual  experience. 
New  passions  will  be  astir  in  our  loves,  new  flowers  will 
blossom  in  our  arts,  new  intentions  will  become  ap- 
parent in  our  destiny.  We  shall  read  in  ourselves  and 
in  Man  new  promises. 

I  dare  to  say  that  this  war  has  been  a  spiritual 
experience,  not  only  for  individual  men,  but  for  Man 
himself;  not  only  for  man  in  the  branch  of  the  tree, 
but  for  Man  in  the  great  trunk  from  which  in  spirit  we 
branches  all  proceed. 

Away  in  the  depths  of  Man,  and  from  deeper  depths, 
proceeds  the  Almighty  Will,  in  whose  fulfilment  lies 


THE   SOLDIER  AND   THE   CROSS         99 

the  destiny  of  Man  and  the  destinies  of  men.  And 
those  who  live  in  communion  know  that  this  war  is 
no  calamity,  no  axe  at  the  roots,  but  the  great  storm 
wind  of  autumn.  They  know  that  the  wind  has  blown 
before,  and  that  it  will  blow  again,  scattering  leaves 
and  branches  into  the  Death  Kingdoms,  bringing  after 
it  tears  of  rain  and  sleep  and  peace  and  life  again  — 
new  life. 


XVI 

School  Children 

One  of  the  phenomena  which  show  how  popular 
the  war  is  in  Russia  is  the  participation  of  the  children 
in  the  conflict.  There  is  scarcely  a  town  school  in 
Russia  from  which  boys  have  not  run  away  to  the  war. 
Hundreds  of  girls  have  gone  off  in  boys'  clothes  and 
tried  to  pass  themselves  off  as  boys  and  enlist  as  volun- 
teers, and  several  have  got  through,  since  the  medical 
examination  is  only  a  negligible  formality  required  in 
one  place,  forgotten  in  another ;  the  Russians  are  so  fit 
as  a  whole.  So  among  the  wounded  in  the  battle  of 
the  Nieman  was  a  broad-shouldered,  vigorous  girl  from 
Zlato-Ust,  only  i6  years  old,  and  nobody  had  dreamed 
that  she  was  other  than  the  man  for  whom  she  was 
passing  herself  off.  But  not  only  boys  and  girls  of  i6 
and  17,  but  children  of  1 1  and  12  have  contrived  to  have 
a  hand  either  in  the  fighting  or  in  the  nursing. 

Whilst  I  was  in  Wilna  there  was  a  touching  case,  a 
Httle  girl  of  12  years,  Marusia  Charushina,  turned  up. 
She  had  run  away  from  her  home  in  Viatka,  some  thou- 
sand miles  away,  had  got  on  the  train  as  a  "hare,"  i.e. 
without  a  ticket.    The  conductor  had  smiled  on  her 


SCHOOL   CHILDREN  loi 

and  let  her  go  on.  At  Wilna,  in  the  traffic  of  the  great 
Polish  city,  she  was  a  little  bewildered,  but  she  asked  a 
passing  soldier  the  way  to  a  hospital ;  he  took  her  to 
one,  and  she  explained  to  him  that  she  had  come  to 
nurse  the  wounded.  At  the  hospital  a  Red  Cross  nurse 
questioned  her,  and  she  gave  the  same  answer.  The 
nurse  telegraphed  to  the  little  girl's  father,  and  asked 
his  permission  that  she  should  remain  in  the  hospital 
nursing  the  wounded  soldiers.  The  father  gave  per- 
mission, so  little  Marusia  was  allowed  to  remain.  A 
uniform  was  made  for  her,  and  now  as  the  smallest 
Sister  of  Mercy  among  them  all  she  tends  the  soldiers 
and  is  very  popular. 

There  was  Stefan  Krafchenko,  a  boy  of  ten,  who  said 
he  wanted  to  fight  the  Germans,  and  so  was  taken  along 
by  the  indulgent  soldiers.  He  was  attached  to  the 
artillery,  and  handed  up  shells  out  of  the  shell  boxes 
during  three  battles  and  came  out  of  all  unscathed, 
and  glorious  and  happy.  Then  Victor  Katchalof ,  a  boy 
of  thirteen,  had  his  horse  shot  under  him  and  was  him- 
self wounded  in  the  leg  during  the  fight  against  the 
Austrians  below  Lfof.  Constantin  Usof,  a  boy  of 
thirteen,  was  wounded  by  shrapnel  at  Avgustof. 

Perhaps  the  greatest  schoolboy  hero  of  Russia  is  a 
boy  named  Orlof,  from  Zhitomir  town  school.  He 
fought  in  eleven  battles  and  was  eventually  decorated 
by  the  Tsar  with  the  Order  of  St.  George.  Whilst 
reconnoitring  he  came  into  collision  with  a  great  force 


I02  RUSSIA  AND   THE  WORLD 

of  the  enemy.  He  lay  in  a  trench  with  his  fellows  and 
fought  all  day.  But  ammunition  ran  very  low,  and 
Orlof  saved  his  corps  by  creeping  out  in  the  dark  and 
finding  his  way  through  heaps  of  corpses  to  the  main 
Russian  force.  He  was  under  gun  and  artillery  fire 
all  the  time,  but  he  succeeded  in  getting  across  and  so 
saved  his  friends. 

There  are  many  stories  of  the  children  left  behind 
in  the  towns  and  provinces  overrun  by  the  Germans. 
I  give  an  amusing  one.  The  Pohsh  name  for  a  certain 
sort  of  common  mushroom  is  Kozaki,  and  this  led  to  a 
misunderstanding.  A  party  of  German  dragoons  came 
along  the  border  of  a  forest,  and,  seeing  several  Httle 
children  walking  hand-in-hand  in  the  woods,  they 
asked : 

"Are  there  any  Cossacks  (Cossachen)  in  the  wood?" 

"Not  in  this  wood,"  said  the  children.  "But  in 
that  forest  on  the  other  side  of  the  meadow  there  are 
thousands  and  thousands." 

The  dragoons  galloped  off  in  a  terrible  fright. 

These  are  but  random  instances  of  the  active  interest 
of  the  school  children.  The  Imperial  Academy  of 
Science  is  collecting,  and  will  probably  edit  and  publish, 
all  manner  of  printed  and  unprinted  impressions  of 
the  war,  diaries,  minor  dispatches  or  authenticated 
stories  of  deeds  of  derring  do.  When  these  are  issued 
it  will  be  seen  to  what  an  extent  the  children  of  Russia 
have  been  fighting  in  this  war.     In  the  playgrounds 


SCHOOL   CHILDREN  103 

ten  years  ago  war  was  unpopular.  The  war  with 
Japan  did  not  fire  the  minds  of  the  young  ones  —  the 
children  were  all  agog  then  with  the  idea  of  revolution, 
so  precocious  are  the  young  in  Russia. 

Li  the  humbler  and  less  romantic  life  of  the  children 
who  do  not  run  away  there  is  also  much  that  is  beautiful. 
In  Moscow  each  school  has  its  own  special  hospital. 
The  children  support  it,  visit  it  daily.  Each  child  is 
responsible  for  the  linen  underclothing  of  each  man. 
At  the  sound  of  the  church  bell  which  sounds  inter- 
mittently in  all  the  cities  the  children  stop  their  daily 
tasks,  pause  a  moment,  remember  the  battlefields  and 
the  great  struggle,  and  cross  themselves. 

In  this  way  school  life  is  touched  in  England  also  as 
well  as  in  Russia.  In  many  country  places  the  village 
church  bell  rings  to  remind  the  people  to  pray  for  the 
soldiers.  And  in  London  also,  even  in  the  poorest 
schools,  there  is  true  national  feehng  and  an  indi- 
vidual tenderness.  When  I  am  in  England  I  fre- 
quently go  down  to  one  school  and  talk  to  the  children 
about  Russia  and  tell  them  fairy  stories.  So  I  have 
Httle  friends  away  there,  and  they  write  to  me  upon 
occasion.  And  I  hear  from  little  Winnie  Drew  and 
Dorothy  Parker,  whose  brother  has  enhsted  in  the 
Royal  Fusiliers,  and  Lily  Straker,  who  says  the  war- 
prayer  in  school  "partly  for  my  father  as  weU  as  for 
all  the  other  soldiers,"  and  from  Hilda  Dunn  and  one 
or  two  others,  all  knitting  gloves  and  making  warm 


I04  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

things  for  the  soldiers,  each  writing  a  letter  to  the  soldier 
who  may  get  the  warm  thing,  putting  little  notes  into 
the  thumbs  of  the  gloves,  notes  beginning,  Dear  soldier- 
protector  and  the  like  —  receiving  the  tenderest  letters 
in  return  from  the  chance  receivers  of  the  gifts.  Dear 
children !    Dear  soldiers  ! 

A  nurse  was  wheeling  a  baby  in  a  perambulator  past 
Buckingham  Palace  one  day  last  December,  and,  as 
it  happened.  Lord  Kitchener's  motor-car  came  up  at 
the  same  time.  There  was  cross-traffic,  and  the  motor 
stopped  to  let  it  get  past.  And  it  stopped  just  opposite 
the  baby. 

"Salute,  Pat !"  said  the  nurse. 

The  little  one  put  his  wee  hand  to  his  brow  and 
saluted.  This  caught  Kitchener's  eye.  And  he  gravely 
returned  the  salute. 


XVII 

Trophies 

The  interest  in  all  the  little  trophies  of  the  war  is 
great.  Soldiers  preserve  ten  pfennig  pieces  to  take 
home  to  their  wives  as  if  they  were  gold.  Buttons 
cut  off  with  bayonets  from  the  German  and  Austrian 
dead  are  prized ;  also  regimental  facings,  bullets  ex- 
tracted by  the  surgeon  from  their  own  or  comrade's 
wounded  body,  helmets,  swords,  pistols,  and  not  only 
these  things,  but  rings  and  bracelets  and  watches. 
Some  peasants  have  a  good  eye  for  what  is  really 
valuable.  The  Poles  are  the  proud  possessors  of  great 
quantities  of  German  lead  picked  up  on  the  battlefields, 
and  also  of  fragments  of  plate-glass  picked  up  on  the 
pavements  of  their  bomb-stricken  capital.  The  news- 
papers of  various  cities  exhibit  many  war  curiosities 
in  their  windows,  and  thus  attract  great  crowds. 
Such  a  curiosity  is  the  following  abridged  German 
diary  exhibited  in  the  window  of  the  Russian  Word 
pubUcation  offices  in  Moscow.  It  is  one  of  the  many 
interesting  journals  of  the  war. 

July  31.  —  War  threatens. 

August  I  and  2.  —  Mobihsation.  Food  disgusting. 
Extra  pay  not  received. 

los 


io6  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

August  3.  —  Our  detachment,  commanded  by  Lieu- 
tenant Zimmer,  pursues  three  spies. 

August  4.  —  We  set  out  for  the  frontier.  Alarming 
news  that  a  division  of  Cossacks  is  breaking  through 
towards  Elbing.  Everyone  most  upset.  No  Cossacks, 
however,  visible.     Food  impossible. 

August  5.  —  Two  squadrons  of  Russian  lancers 
attack  us.  We  do  not  answer  their  fire,  the  distance 
is  too  great  and  cartridges  too  precious.  Each  shot 
should  bring  down  one  of  these  swine.  We  pass  the 
frontier.  The  good  high  road  ends  and  we  plunge 
into  a  wilderness  of  sand  and  stones.  ObUged  to  dis- 
mount from  bicycle  and  walk.  At  Zelun  we  confiscated 
seven  wagons.  I  thought  to  die  of  laughter.  One 
wagoner  absolutely  wouldn't  give  up  his  wagon  and  had 
to  be  convinced  with  the  butt  end  of  a  rifle. 

Lieutenant  Zimmer  ordered  me  to  share  with  him 
my  last  hard-boiled  egg.  We  put  our  bicycles  in  the 
wagons  and  got  on  to  Lautenburg,  where  at  the  Hotel 
de  Rome  we  had  a  decent  supper. 

August  6.  —  We  occupied  a  village  near  Lautenburg. 
There  was  a  service  going  on  in  the  church.  Suspect- 
ing that  explosives  were  hidden  there,  ten  men,  in- 
cluding myself,  were  told  off  to  break  up  the  floor  in 
front  of  the  altar  and  search.  We  had  dug  down  to 
the  vaults  when  alarm  was  given  and  we  had  to  return 
to  the  main  body. 

August  7.  —  We  came  to  Stary  Zelun.     Destroyed 


TROPHIES  107 

the  post  office.  Threw  the  telegraph  apparatus  into 
the  water.    Local  population  quite  polite  to  us. 

Two  pretty  girls  here  .  .  .  fearfully  afraid  of  us  .  .  . 
Could  not  make  them  understand  we  intended  no  harm. 

August  8.  —  Information  received  that  a  division  of 
Russian  cavalry  has  invaded  Prussia  towards  Neiden- 
burg.     We  move  on  towards  Ilovo. 

August  9.  —  Sunday.  We  advanced  towards  Mlava. 
South  from  Ilovo  we  came  under  fire .  We  were  in  a  valley 
and  they  shot  at  us  from  all  sides,  shot  continuously. 

The  first  to  be  wounded  was  Lieutenant  Makketanz. 
Wounded  in  the  brow.  The  second  to  be  wounded 
was  Sergeant  Derke.  Wounded  in  the  stomach. 
The  third,  Lieutenant  Zander.  Two  wounds  in  the 
chest.  I  wonder  if  he  is  alive  still.  The  fourth  to  be 
wounded  was  myself.  ...  I  was  on  my  bicycle  and 
the  bullet  struck  me  in  the  forearm,  apparently  breaking 
an  artery,  for  the  blood  flowed  from  the  wound.  I 
rushed  to  Sergeant  Kaiser,  holding  the  wound  tightly 
with  my  right  hand.  Kaiser  tied  it  up.  I  ran  back 
to  shelter.  Found  Ramsdorf  lying  in  his  blood  in 
great  pain.     I  gave  him  drink. 

Sergeant-Major  Zink  is  a  great  coward.  .  .  .  It's 
not  surprising,  therefore,  that  he  hid  himself.  He  was 
afraid  of  receiving  a  bullet.  Our  detachment  hurriedly 
retired.     We  wounded  were  left. 

In  fifteen  minutes  the  enemy  appeared.  Cossacks. 
Filthy,  but  very  kind.    They  carried  us  away.     One  of 


io8  RUSSIA   AND   THE  WORLD 

them  took  possession  of  my  gun.  I  had,  however, 
taken  care  to  break  it  before  they  came. 

We  were  taken  to  Mlava  and  treated  much  better 

than  we  expected.     Dr.  K operated  on  me  and 

was  most  attentive  and  poHte.  I  suffered  a  good  deal, 
not  being  chloroformed.  I  was  looked  after  by  a  very 
sympathetic  volunteer  nurse  who  spoke  German  ex- 
tremely well,  though  she  was  Russian,  the  sister  of  an 
officer  at  the  war. 

To  my  immense  astonishment  we  Germans  were 
allowed  to  be  together  in  the  hospital  and  talk  as  much 
as  we  liked. 

August  lo.  —  Re-bandaged  to-day,  since  my  wound 
has  been  giving  me  great  pain.  I  retain  my  conscious- 
ness. As  I  lay  on  the  operating  table  I  suddenly 
wanted  beer.  I  asked  for  it.  Everybody  laughed,  and 
I  also,  because  I  did  not  say  "bier"  in  German,  but 

used  the  Russian  word  pivo.      Dr.  K promised 

it  me,  and  in  an  hour  I  had  it. 

August  II. — Wakened  by  noise  of  shooting.  A 
German  aeroplane  was  circling  over  the  town  and  the 
Russians  were  shooting  at  it.  The  aeroplane  got  away. 
Thank  God ! 

Learned  to-day  the  name  of  my  beautiful,  kind  nurse. 
I  shall  remember  it  all  my  life.  We  are  to  be  sent  to 
Warsaw.     She  has  promised  to  let  our  relatives  know. 

August  12.  —  Taken  in  wagons  to  the  train.  The 
railway  carriages  are  very  comfortable. 


TROPHIES  109 

Next  to  me  lay  a  Cossack.  He  was  wounded  in 
the  chest  and  moaned  all  day  and  all  night.  When  he 
drank,  water  ran  out  at  the  wound.  Our  bullets  are 
more  vicious  than  the  Russian  ones. 

At  Novo-Georgievsk  we  changed  trains.  Crowds  of 
people  stared  at  us,  some  pitying,  some  reviling  us. 

We  received  clean  underclothing  to-day.  Glory  be 
to  God ! 

August  13. — Food  good  and  plentiful,  but  life  is  a  bore. 

August  14.  —  Food  is  good. 

August  15.  — Re-bandaged. 

August  16.  —  Officers  come  in  and  talk  to  us  for  a 
whole  hour.  It  is  very  gay.  We  hope  that  our  good 
sword  will  win  where  diplomacy  failed.     Food  good. 

August  17.  — We  still  stand  at  a  wayside  station. 
Prussian  officer  brought  in.  He  has  been  convicted 
as  a  spy.  He  has  an  estate  in  Russia  and  had  enter- 
tained German  soldiers  there.  He  is  to  be  shot.  He 
charges  me  to  give  messages  to  his  sweetheart  and  his 
brother. 

He  was  calm  and  determined. 

August  18. — Brought  in  Lieutenant  Riboldt,  cap- 
tured. We  are  all  being  sent  to  Warsaw.  The 
wounded  Cossack  is  dead ;  we  watched  his  funeral. 

August  19.  — They  say  we  shall  be  in  Warsaw  to- 
morrow. We  shall  see !  The  food  is  good,  especially 
the  supper.     We  had  Kletsky  last  night. 

At  this  point  the  diary  ended. 


XVIII 
The  Evergreens  Remain 

What  days  I  had  at  Wilna  tramping  in  the  rain ! 
I  found  myseK  so  much  nearer  to  the  war  than  I  had 
been  before.  The  war  became  more  intimate,  it 
created  and  released  a  musical  flood  of  thoughts  and 
impressions,  so  that  all  the  time  I  walked  I  was  like 
Abt  Vogler  at  the  organ.  The  tramp  of  thousands  to 
conflict  and  death,  the  battle  music,  the  passion  of  war 
and  the  dance  of  the  orgy,  the  colours  and  the  flags, 
the  emblems  and  signs,  the  victories  and  the  terrible 
slaughters,  the  conquest  of  kingdoms,  the  abasing  of  old 
gods,  and  the  building  of  new  States,  blends  in  the  soul 
in  one  great  passionate  and  appalling  music. 

It  seemed  I  scarcely  slept  an  hour  any  night  of  my 
month  in  Poland.  I  lived  two  or  three  festival  days 
into  each  ordinary  day,  and  yet  I  never  grew  tired  or 
duU.  I  often  said  to  myself:  This  cannot  go  on;  I 
shall  have  a  reaction  against  this  life,  and  flee  away  to 
some  quiet  corner  in  the  Crimea  or  the  Caucasus.  But 
the  tired  moment  never  came.  As  Loosha  said  to  me 
one  day  when  I  reproached  her  for  spending  whole 
nights  smoking  or  talking  —  "Life  has  become  too 
interesting." 


THE   EVERGREENS   REMAIN  iii 

I  read  one  book  over  and  over  again  whilst  I  was  in 
Poland,  and  that  was  Shakespeare's  "Richard  III." 
I  had  it  in  my  pocket.  That  is  the  use  of  pocket 
editions.  What  matter  if  pockets  do  bulge ;  they  were 
meant  to  bulge  with  good  things.  It  is  a  splendid  gain 
for  any  man  to  have  for  a  considerable  stretch  of  time 
the  same  book  in  his  pocket,  and  to  read  it  over  and 
over  again  and  so  penetrate  it,  wed  it  to  his  life,  asso- 
ciate it  in  memory  with  the  facts  of  a  time.  Walk 
with  Shakespeare  or  St.  John  or  Robert  Browning,  or 
whom  you  will  —  only  walk  with  one  of  them.  They 
are  not  dead :  they  are  lonely  ones,  they  are  would-be 
living  companions. 

"Richard  III."  is  a  play  all  about  conscience,  about 
the  thoughts  and  ghosts  which  rise  out  of  the  depth  of 
the  soul  and  show  themselves  in  our  waking  or  dreaming 
hours.  It  is  like  Dostoieffsky's  "Crime  and  Punish- 
ment" in  Russian  literature,  and  is  as  charitably 
written.  It  gives  the  full  story  of  Richard  as  the  other 
does  of  Raskolnikof ,  it  does  not  merely  dismiss  him  as 
a  bad  man.  In  thinking  of  the  Kaiser  whom  so  many 
hate,  it  is  well  to  have  in  mind  "Richard  III."  What 
is  more  poignant  than  that  speech  of  Richard  on  his  last 
night  when  he  starts  from  an  evil  dream  — 

"  Give  me  another  horse,  bind  up  my  wounds ; 
Have  mercy,  Jesu !     Soft !    I  did  but  dream. 
O  coward  conscience,  how  dost  thou  aflSict  me ! 
The  Ughts  burn  blue.    It  is  now  dead  midnight. 


112  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

Cold  fearful  drops  stand  on  my  trembling  flesh. 

What  do  I  fear  ?    Myself  ?    There's  none  else  by : 

Richard  loves  Richard ;  that  is,  I  am  I. 

Is  there  a  murderer  here  ?     No ;  Yes,  I  am : 

Then  fly.    What,  from  myself?    Great  reason  why, 

Lest  I  revenge  myself  upon  myself. 

Alack,  I  love  myself !    Wherefore  ?  for  any  good 

That  I  myself  have  done  unto  myself  ? 

O,  no !  alas,  I  rather  hate  myself 

For  hateful  deeds  committed  by  myself ! 

I  am  a  villain ;  yet  I  lie,  I  am  not. 

Fool,  of  thyself  speak  well ;  fool,  do  not  flatter. 

My  conscience  hath  a  thousand  several  tongues. 

And  every  tongue  brings  in  a  several  tale. 

And  every  tale  condemns  me  for  a  villain. 

Perjury,  perjury,  in  the  high'st  degree ; 

Murder,  stern  murder,  in  the  dir'st  degree ; 

All  several  sins,  all  used  in  each  degree, 

Throng  to  the  bar,  crying  all,  '  Guilty !  guilty ! ' 

I  shall  despair.     There  is  no  creature  loves  me ; 

And  if  I  die,  no  soul  shall  pity  me ; 

Nay,  wherefore  should  they,  since  that  I  myself 

Find  in  myself  no  pity  to  myself  ? 

Methought  the  souls  of  all  that  I  had  murdered 
Came  to  my  tent,  and  every  one  did  threat 
To-morrow's  vengeance  on  the  head  of  Richard. 

By  the  Apostle  Paul,  shadows  to-night 
Have  struck  more  terror  to  the  soul  of  Richard 
Than  can  the  substance  of  ten  thousand  soldiers 
Armed  in  proof," 


THE   EVERGREENS   REMAIN  113 

Is  anything  of  its  kind  more  wonderful  than  the  speech 

of  Clarence  in  the  Tower,  the  telling  of  the  vision  that 

his  soul  sees  — 

"  then  came  wandering  by 

A  shadow  like  an  angel,  with  bright  hair 

Dabbled  in  blood ;  and  he  shrieked  out  aloud, 

'  Clarence  is  come '  —  false,  fleeting,  perjured  Clarence ; 

That  stabbed  me  in  the  field  by  Tewksbury." 

How  apt  to  the  occasion  of  the  war  are  a  hundred  little 
phrases  in  "Richard  III."  — 

"  So  now  prosperity  begins  to  mellow 
And  drop  into  the  rotten  mouth  of  death." 

or  Richard's  war  speech  defaming  the  enemy  — 

"  Remember  whom  you  are  to  cope  withal ; 
A  sort  of  vagabonds,  rascals,  runaways." 

Shakespeare  and  Dostoieffsky  remain,  and  we  are  glad 
of  them.  We  love  them,  though  we  love  also  many  of 
the  gentler  and  nearer  who,  with  the  coming  of  war, 
have  become  dumb  for  us. 

Some  of  the  best  lines  in  Hardy's  "Dynasts"  are 
those  wherein  he  sings  of  the  flowers  and  butterflies  of 
the  field  of  Waterloo,  how  they  are  stamped  into  blood 
and  mud  and  destroyed  unnoticed  in  the  great  human 
struggle.  How  many  beautiful  flowers  and  winged 
fancies  perish  in  the  hour  of  lustful  and  coarse  conflict ! 
Not  only  the  flowers  and  winged  beauties  of  the  field, 
but  the  more  dehcate  things  all  the  world  over.    The 


114  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

playing  of  the  lute  and  the  guitar  give  way  to  the  drum 
and  the  cymbal  as  in  turn  these  give  way  to  violin  and 
organ.  The  sweet  lyrics  of  peace  give  way  to  battle 
marches  and  satires,  and  these  give  way  in  turn  to  odes 
of  victory  and  hymns  to  the  dead, 

A  great  change  takes  place  in  the  conditions  of 
culture.  The  sudden  chilly  autumn  strikes  down 
upon  our  luxuriant  summer  and  withers  it  at  a  breath. 

"  We  anxious  ask,  will  spring  return 
And  birds  and  flowers  again  be  gay?" 

But  for  the  hour  and  the  month  there  is  winter  and 
sleep.  Only  the  evergreens  keep  awake  and  rustle  or 
dream  in  the  winter  wind  or  peace.  So  in  our  culture 
the  evergreens  remain. 

How  dead  is  modern  Russian  literature  at  this  mo- 
ment !  English  publishing  houses,  like  the  quern  at 
the  bottom  of  the  sea  which  I  have  already  told  you 
is  grinding  out  herrings  and  soup,  are  still  grinding 
out  novels  and  travel  books ;  but  in  Russia,  owing  to 
lack  of  paper,  the  strictness  of  the  Censor,  and  the 
fact  that  people  have  no  ears  but  for  the  war  and 
Russia,  Russian  publication  has  almost  ceased.  Some 
of  the  best  magazines,  such  as  Zaveti  and  Russkoe 
Bogatstvo  have  been  stopped  for  the  reason  of  the  war. 
The  theatres  are  putting  on  only  old  favourites,  or  else 
tinsel  and  war-paint  dramas  of  the  type  of  Leonid 
Andreef 's  play  about  Belgium,  and  its  King.     The  poets 


THE   EVERGREENS   REMAIN  115 

have  paused.  The  great  ecclesiastical  and  rehgious 
discussions  that  occupied  last  year  have  lost  interest. 
The  ugly  novels  and  plays  which  feed  the  bourgeoisie 
have  ceased  to  appear. 

In  England  and  Scotland  also,  it  is  noticeable  that 
the  war  has  given  us  a  truer  perspective  and  cleared 
away  the  Lilliputian  obstructions  of  modern  life.  We 
see  Shakespeare  great  and  wonderful  again,  and  our 
mockers  of  Shakespeare  shrink  to  figures  like  those 
men  made  of  matches  that  used  to  appear  on  Bryant 
and  May's  match-boxes. 

I  suppose,  all  over  Europe,  with  the  beautiful  flowers 
have  perished  also  the  rank  weeds  and  fungi  of  autunm. 
The  great  tree  Shakespeare  remains,  but  the  tall, 
jealous,  prickly  nettle  that  grew  beside  the  tree  has 
withered  away.  The  evil  toadstools,  scarlet  with 
poisonous  lure,  have  disappeared,  and  the  whiteness 
of  the  snow  has  covered  them,  as  it  were,  with  God's 
mercy.  The  trampled  mud  has  hardened,  and  with 
the  season  we  are  glad. 

In  England  and  Scotland  we  are  with  Shakespeare 
and  Milton  and  Campbell  once  more;  in  Russia, 
instead  of  the  futurist  Severanin  or  the  sex-noveUst 
Artsibashef,  they  are  back  with  Dostoieffsky  and 
Tolstoy.  The  rot  of  autumn  has  disappeared  from 
both  countries,  and  there  is  nothing  left  but  to  remember 
the  summer  and  hope  for  spring  —  hope  for  the  first 
flowers  after  the  war. 


II 

NATIONS 


II.   NATIONS 


Russians 


The  Russian  peasant  soldier  regards  the  enemy  as 
vermin  that  must  be  destroyed.  He  has  no  doubt 
but  that  he  is  clearing  away  something  ugly  and  full  of 
evil.  He  is  fighting  something  pestilential  like  the 
cholera  or  the  plague. 

The  bodies  of  the  Germans  and  the  Austrians  lie 
rotting  on  the  fields  of  Poland  this  autumn  and  early 
winter  and  infecting  the  air  with  odours.  It  was  with 
difficulty  that  the  Russian  soldier  could  be  made  to 
understand  that  he  must  bury  them. 

"Bury  these  corpses,"  says  a  general  to  one  of  his 
servant  soldiers. 

"No,  your  Excellency,"  says  the  latter,  "let  them 
lie  there  like  dogs,  they  are  not  fit  to  be  buried  in  the 
good  earth." 

When  I  told  some  soldiers  of  the  sinking  of  the 
Emden  and  the  capture  of  von  MuUer  they  could 
not  understand  our  leniency  towards  the  German 
admiral. 

119 


I20  RUSSIA  AND   THE   WORLD 

"  Such  people  ought  to  be  destroyed  directly  they  are 
caught,"  said  one  of  the  soldiers.  "He  ought  to  have 
been  executed  at  once." 

In  this  spirit,  of  course,  the  peasant  soldier  goes 
forth  for  the  Tsar,  to  any  of  the  Tsar's  work,  and  whether 
it  be  war  against  Japan,  or  suppression  of  the  Trans- 
Caucasian  cut- throats  in  North  Persia,  or  a  pogrom  of 
a  distasteful  race,  he  has  much  the  same  outlook.  He  is 
so  unswervingly  loyal  to  the  word  of  the  Tsar,  or  what  is 
told  him  is  the  word  of  the  Tsar. 

There  has  been  no  bandying  of  wit  between  German 
and  Russian  soldiers  as  there  is  said  to  have  been  be- 
tween German  and  British.  For  one  thing,  the  Ger- 
mans do  not  understand  Russian.  For  another,  the 
Russian  soldiers  are  carefully  trained  not  to  enter  into 
any  sort  of  converse  or  familiarity  with  their  enemies. 
During  the  time  of  the  revolutionary  outburst  in  Russia, 
it  was  indeed  rather  difficult  for  ordinary  Russian 
civilians  to  joke  or  talk  with  Russian  soldiers.  You 
/could,  however,  offer  them  cigarettes. 

This  necessarily  adds  value  to  the  peasantry  as 
reliable  fighting  material. 

Then  the  reHgion  of  the  peasant  helps  him  to  be 
brave.  The  Russian  army  on  the  offensive  is  some- 
thing hke  an  elemental  destructive  force.  There  is  no 
hesitation  about  the  Russians,  Httle  giving  of  quarter, 
Httle  seeing  of  white  flags,  no  malice,  no  lust,  not  much 
deUght  in  cruelty,  but,  on  the  other  hand,  no  squeamish- 


RUSSIANS  121 

ness.  The  blood  flowing  does  not  turn  the  Russian 
sick,  the  sight  of  the  dead  does  not  make  him  pale.  He 
is  striking  with  the  sword  of  the  Lord. 

True,  the  principal  function  and  purpose  of  war  is 
going  to  kill.  And  therein  lies  not  only  a  denial  of 
Christianity,  but  of  the  primitive  Judaic  law.  "Thou 
shalt  not  kill."  But  the  function  of  Russian  war  that 
has  struck  me  most  was  that  of  going  to  be  killed. 

When  in  the  Altai  Mountains  in  the  middle  of  the 
consecration  service  I  learned  that  it  was  Germany  who 
had  declared  war  upon  Russia,  I  felt  that  the  consecra- 
tion was  consecration  unto  death,  the  strapping  of  the 
knapsack  on  the  back  was  like  the  tying  on  of  the  cross. 

The  religion  of  Russia  is  the  religion  of  death.  As  I 
wrote  in  my  book  on  the  Russian  peasant-pilgrims 
journeying  toward  the  Sepulchre  at  Jerusalem :  — 

"  All  pilgrimages  are  pilgrimages  to  the  Altar,  to  the  place  of 
death.  Protestantism  reveals  itself  as  the  religion  of  the  mystery 
of  life ;  Orthodoxy  as  the  religion  of  death." 

The  Russians  march  to  battle  as  they  tramp  to 
shrines.  Death  is  no  calamity  for  them.  It  is  the 
thrice  beautiful  and  thrice  holy  culmination  of  the 
life  pilgrimage.  Watch  the  Russian  soldiers  at  one  of 
the  many  funerals  of  fallen  comrades.  They  are 
calm  and  reverent,  but  it  is  the  calm  and  reverence 
that  are  the  accompaniment  of  an  exaltation  of  spirit. 

But  the  Cossacks  are  different  in  their  religious  tern- 


122  RUSSIA  AND   THE  WORLD 

perament.  They  are  the  descendants  of  robber  tribes 
and  mercenary  bands.  To  reaHsewhat  the  Cossacks 
have  been  you  must  read  Gogol's  "Tarass  Bulba,"  and 
when  you  have  reahsed  what  they  were  you  have  a 
notion  of  what  they  are.  There  is  much  Russian  blood 
in  them,  but  there  is  also  much  of  the  Tartar  and  the 
Mongol.  They  have  not  much  in  common  with  the 
gentle  Slav.  Their  conception  of  Christianity  is  very 
different  from  that  which  animates  the  moujiks. 

The  Cossack  is  always  a  soldier.  In  Cossack  villages 
every  man  has  to  serve  in  the  army  —  only-sons  have 
no  privileges.  It  is  rarely  that  a  Cossack  is  rejected  on 
medical  grounds,  and  rarer  still  his  acceptance  of  rejec- 
tion. By  his  passport  he  is  a  soldier.  When  he  is 
farming  he  is  said  to  be  "on  leave."  The  village  is 
not  called  a  village  but  a  station,  a  stanitsa.  Almost 
every  man  in  the  station  works  in  trousers  that  have  a 
broad  military  stripe.  By  that  stripe  you  may  tell 
the  Cossacks  and  the  Cossack  stations  in  the  country. 

As  I  tramped  through  several  hundred  miles  of  Cos- 
sack country  last  summer  I  have  a  very  bright  im- 
pression of  the  people.  They  have  considerable  pos- 
sessions of  land.  The  Government  pursues  a  set 
policy  of  giving  the  Cossacks  land,  space  wherein  to 
live  well  and  multiply.  The  whole  of  Central  Asia 
and  Turkestan  is  preferably  settled  by  Cossacks.  The 
Russian  Government  trains  the  men  for  two  or  three 
years,  and  when  the  time  of  training  has  been  run 


RUSSIANS  123 

through  the  authorities  propose  to  them  that  they 
settle  down  near  the  place  where  they  have  been  en- 
camped. Land  will  be  given  them  free.  They  can 
bring  their  sweethearts  and  their  wives.  The  docile 
Kirghiz  and  Chinese  and  other  aborigines  can  be 
practically  forced  to  build  houses  for  them  and  dig  out 
irrigation  canals  and  plant  poplars  and  willows.  A 
company  of  Cossacks  accepts  the  Government  pro- 
posal and  so  a  new  station  is  marked  on  the  map.  A 
church  is  built.  A  horizontal  bar  and  a  wooden  horse 
and  a  greasy  pole  are  put  up.  A  vodka  shop  is  sup- 
plied. And  that  constitutes  Cossack  civilisation.  The 
vodka  shops  are  now  all  closed  and  there  is  talk  of  re- 
opening them  as  schools. 

The  talk  and  the  songs  and  the  life  of  the  station  are 
all  military.  The  talks  are  of  battles  lately  and  battles 
long  ago,  and  the  battles  of  the  future ;  the  songs  are 
recruiting  songs  and  war  songs ;  the  life  is  ever  with 
the  gun  and  on  horseback. 

Children  ride  on  horseback  as  soon  as  they  can  walk 
and  jump.  Little  boys  get  their  elder  brothers'  uni- 
forms cut  down  to  wear,  the  trousers  be  they  ever  so 
ragged  have  still  the  broad  coloured  stripe  that  marks 
the  Cossacks.  Siberian  Cossacks  have  red  stripes, 
Don  Cossacks  have  blue  stripes.  Marching  songs 
are  on  the  children's  lips,  and  one  of  the  most  frequent 
sights  is  that  of  a  company  of  Cossacks  riding  up  the 
main  street  of  the  stanitza  carrying  long  black  pikes 


124  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

in  their  hands  and  singing  choruses  as  they  go.  The 
pike  is  another  distinction  of  the  Cossack ;  it  is  a  long 
black  wooden  lance  which  is  steel-pointed  like  a  spear. 

No  woman  grudges  her  children  to  the  war.  War 
is  the  element  in  which  they  all  live,  and  the  official 
manoeuvres  are  so  wild  and  fierce  that  many  get  killed 
in  them,  kill  one  another  even,  forgetting  that  they  are 
only  playing  at  war.  The  Cossacks  even  in  remote 
Asia  take  themselves  seriously  as  the  personal  body- 
guards of  the  Tsar ;  formerly  robbers  and  border  riders 
of  the  wildest  type,  they  are  now,  thaiiiks  to  tactful 
handling,  the  most  loyal  subjects  of  the  Tsar,  and  are 
bred  out  on  the  Seven-Rivers-Land  and  the  Altai 
Mountains,  for  instance,  much  as  one  might  breed  a 
type  of  horse,  for  sterling  qualities.  They  are  called 
Orthodox  Christians,  but  have  seldom  a  mystical  sense 
of  Christianity.  They  are  much  more  superstitious 
than  the  moujiks.  They  hand  down  their  ikons  and 
their  battle  charms  from  generation  to  generation  and 
worship  them  almost  idolatrously. 

Their  homes  are  neither  comfortable  nor  clean,  the 
homes  of  eagles  rather  than  of  men.  The  women  are 
less  tidy  than  ordinary  Russian  peasant  women,  and 
eat  more  and  sleep  more. 

As  a  fair  companion  of  the  road  explained  to  me :  — 

''It's  the  women  must  be  blamed  for  the  disorder  in 
their  cottages.  After  dinner  the  women  always  lie 
down  and  fall  asleep,  and  they  leave  all  the  dirty  dishes 


RUSSIANS  125 

on  the  table  and  let  the  pigs  and  the  chickens  come  in 
and  hunt  for  food." 

You  enter  the  little  room  that  is  all  in  all  of  a  home, 
and  you  find  fifty  thousand  flies  flustering  over  every- 
thing. Often  of  an  afternoon  I  have  entered  a  cottage 
in  order  to  get  milk  and  have  found  everyone  asleep, 
even  the  dog,  who  but  opens  one  eye  at  the  noise  of 
my  step.  The  baby  Hes  in  the  swing  cradle  and  tosses 
now  and  then,  and  cries  a  little.  He  would  be  almost 
naked  were  he  not  black  with  flies.  The  chickens 
keep  pecking  flies  off  his  body  and  hurting  him  —  that 
is  why  he  cries.  None  the  less,  the  baby  will  grow  up 
to  be  h  sturdy  Cossack.  The  children  are  none  the 
worse  for  dirt  and  disorder,  to  judge  from  the  fine  young 
men  we  see,  tall,  agile,  hawk-faced,  the  rising  generation 
no  weaker  than  the  fathers.  ^ 

They  are  hospitable,  but  because  of  the  biting 
flies  I  have  found  it  more  comfortable  to  sleep  out  of 
doors,  even  in  bad  weather,  even  when  mosquitoes  were 
thick.  They  always  give  you  full  measure  and  running 
over  when  you  buy  from  them.  But  they  are  alto- 
gether left  behind  in  hospitaHty  by  their  neighbours 
the  ELirghiz  or  the  Mongohans. 

The  Cossack  has  settled  where  of  old  the  Kirghiz 
had  his  best  pastures.  He  has  harried  the  gentle 
Eastern  into  the  bare  lands  and  wildernesses  and  over 
the  border  to  China.  The  winter  pastures  that  the 
Kirghiz  has  discovered  for  himself  and  marked  out 


126  RUSSIA   AND    THE   WORLD 

with  stones  the  Cossack  has  pitilessly  mown  for  hay. 
Even  his  houses,  the  long  village  street  of  them,  the 
Cossack  makes  the  Kirghiz  build,  whilst  he  stands  by 
like  a  barin  or  a  master.  The  Kirghiz  will  take  lower 
wages  for  his  labour  than  even  the  Chinee ;  he  can  be 
persuaded  on  occasion  to  work  for  nothing. 

"You  are  entering  Kirghiz  country  now;  there  are 
no  Russian  villages,  no  Cossack  stations,"  said  one  to 
me.  "No  matter,  you  can  always  spend  the  night  in  a 
Kirghiz  tent  and  you  will  always  get  food  from  them,  as 
much  as  you  want.  Don't  ever  pay  them  anything. 
They  don't  expect  it.  They  will  give  you  the  best  they 
have,  but  don't  pay.  You  needn't.  They  are  that 
sort  of  people,  glupovaty,  stupid-like.  It  is  established 
so  with  them." 

The  favourite  adjective  applied  by  Russians  to 
Cossack  is  otchainy,  which  is  supposed  to  mean  "des- 
perate," but  certainly  does  not  mean  it  in  the  ordinary 
sense  of  hopeless.  It  means  past-praying-for,  wild- 
beyond-all-hopes. 

"The  Siberian  Cossacks,  they  are  the  wildest  of  all," 
you'll  hear. 

They  are  spoken  of  by  ordinary  Russians  much  as 
the  Highlanders  are  spoken  of  by  us,  and  in  some  re- 
spects they  resemble  the  clansmen.  They  are  brave 
beyond  any  qualification.  They  are  all  expert  horse- 
men, and  ride  like  the  wind.  Their  favourite  exploit 
is  to  charge  to  meet  the  enemy  lying  close  to  their  horses' 


RUSSIANS  127 

sides,  even  to  their  horses'  beUies,  so  that  it  looks  to 
the  enemy  as  if  a  drove  of  riderless  horses  was  plunging 
towards  them.  And  when  the  Cossacks  arrive  at  the 
object  of  their  charge  Heaven  help  the  poor  Uhlans  or 
ordinary  European  cavalry  and  infantry  who  happen 
to  be  in  the  way.  The  Cossacks  dehght  in  the  cutting 
off  of  heads. 

It  was  the  Siberian  Cossacks  who  turned  the  scale 
at  the  first  battle  of  Warsaw,  and  with  them,  as 
brothers-in-arms,  the  Caucasian  Cavalry.  The  Cauca- 
sian tribesmen  are,  if  anything,  more  warlike  than  the 
Cossacks,  stronger  physically,  always  wearing  arms  and 
understanding  Hfe  as  military  gallantry,  having  much 
less  regard  for  the  value  of  life,  and  much  more  given 
to  fighting  in  time  of  peace.  Murder  has  no  moral 
stigma  in  the  Caucasus ;  the  man  who  has  killed  another 
man  is  not  troubled  about  his  crime,  not  troubled  in  his 
mind,  not  obliged  to  return  and  look  at  the  corpse,  not 
obliged  to  confess  at  the  last.  Indeed,  many  of  the 
pleasantest  and  most  courteous  men  you  may  meet  in 
the  mountains  have  several  what  we  should  call 
"murders"  to  their  charge.  Their  success  in  fighting 
gives  them  more  confidence  and  more  politeness. 

They  are  not  quite  so  brave  as  the  Cossacks,  being 
considerably  more  intelligent  and  a  very  calculating 
people.  They  consider  themselves  Liberals,  and  are 
not  so  loyal  to  the  Tsar.  They  are  corruptible,  and  the 
Russian  system  of  bribery  has  been  much  improved  by 


128  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

them.  They  are  more  cruel  than  the  Cossacks,  less 
Christian.  A  fine  body  of  people,  however,  the  hand- 
somest men  in  Europe,  the  hardest. 

War  for  them  is  also  the  most  interesting  thing  in 
life,  and  conversation  over  the  endless  stoops  of  red 
wine  always  turns  to  battles.  By  the  way,  the  pro- 
hibition of  the  sale  of  vodka  and  beer  leaves  the  Cau- 
casus just  as  drunken  as  before.  The  Government 
had  no  monopoly  there  in  the  sale  of  spirits.  Every- 
one could  sell  who  wanted  to.  Vodka,  however,  was 
never  much  drunk  owing  to  the  fact  that  the  Caucasus 
has  its  own  good  vintage  and  the  natives  despise  the 
use  of  spirits  as  a  sign  of  lower  caste.  It  is  noble  to 
drink  wine,  base  to  drink  spirits. 

They  are  a  poor  people  as  money  goes.  It  is  mar- 
vellous that  they  retain  their  physique  considering  the 
poorness  of  the  food  they  eat  and  the  quantity  of  wine 
they  drink.  Many  villages  subsist  on  black  bread  and 
wine.  They  are  always  hungry.  They  could  live 
much  better  than  they  do.  They  love  clothes,  love 
rich  carpets  and  elegant  ornaments.  They  would  put 
jewels  on  their  wives,  would  be  princes  not  only  in 
title  but  in  estate,  and  would  hold  Court  and  go  out 
hunting  or  to  battle  with  retainers  in  the  good  old  way. 

The  Finns  are  another  people  under  the  Russian 
rule,  and  Finland  one  more  of  all  the  Russias.  Their 
fighting  qualities  do  not  call  for  comment;  they  are 
brave  men,  stubborn,  obedient,  mostly  foot  soldiers. 


RUSSIANS  129 

Their  sympathies  are  not  really  with  Russia  in  any- 
thing, and  when  left  to  themselves  the  people  develop 
a  peculiarly  Teutonic  type  of  civilisation.  They  are 
clean,  orderly,  thrifty.  In  a  hard  cHmate  they  have 
the  grace  to  make  the  means  to  live  well.  They  seem 
to  me  to  be  a  distinct  nation,  and  might  well  be  trusted 
to  look  after  themselves.  They  have  aheady  their  own 
Finnish  money,  their  own  Finnish  postal  stamps,  the 
Finnish  language  is  spoken  freely,  and,  indeed,  in  the 
villages  and  small  towns  it  is  extremely  difficult  to 
make  oneseK  understood  in  Russian.  These  are  the 
outward  signs,  therefore,  of  a  separate  nationahty. 

Russia  feels  that  there  is  danger  in  Finnish  freedom, 
owing  to  the  sympathy  between  the  Finns  and  the 
Swedes.  And  the  Swedes  have  been  pronouncing 
very  bellicose  manifestos  against  Russia  in  the  time 
previous  to  this  great  war  between  Russia  and  Germany. 
War  between  Sweden  and  Russia  has  been  a  political 
card  for  some  time. 

Still,  Finland,  despite  rumours  at  the  commence- 
ment of  hostihties,  has  remained  faithful  to  the  Rus- 
sian Emperor,  and  has  recognised  that  it  would  sooner 
be  a  Russian  than  a  German  province. 

Russia  is  pulling  all  together.  No  one  would  have 
thought  it  likely  that  Russians,  Cossacks,  Georgians, 
Finns,  Poles,  and  Jews  would  at  any  time  be  fighting 
together  in  unanimity.    But  there  it  is. 

The  war  has  proved  a  wonderful  touchstone  for 


I30  RUSSIA   AND   THE  WORLD 

virtue,  a  divining  rod  for  hidden  gold.  It  has  brought 
out  and  revealed  the  hidden  quaHties  in  nations  and 
individuals.  Many  people  have  held  that  the  Russians 
were  a  noble  nation,  generous,  brave  and  pious.  The 
war  brought  their  quaHties  out  in  such  a  way  that  even 
the  accustomed  doubter  of  Russia  has  been  obliged  to 
confess  that  he  may  have  been  wrong. 

The  war  has  given  faith.  Despite  the  previous 
horror  of  war,  it  is  now  almost  a  platitude  to  praise 
the  war.  Even  in  peace-loving  England  the  war  is 
recognised  as  a  national  blessing,  certainly  in  no  sense 
as  a  national  calamity.  It  has  reduced  our  cranks 
and  celebrities  to  their  true  dimensions ;  it  has  calmed 
the  noisy  Ulster  squabble ;  it  has  taken  our  attention 
off  our  national  ill-health  and  turned  it  on  our  splendid 
but  neglected  youth.  It  has  given  us  a  duty  to  a 
fatherland  and  to  ourselves  beyond  the  duty  to  busi- 
ness and  position.  It  has  showed  us  the  necessity  of 
drilling  and  holding  ourselves  up  straight,  of  being 
hard,  of  prizing  discomfort  and  danger.  It  has  made 
the  Empire  greater  and  cleaner,  and  has  given  the  go- 
by to  the  cult  of  go-as-you-please  and  get-along-some- 
how. 

Unfortunately  among  those  in  England  who  have 
no  personal  stake  in  the  war,  no  one  fighting  in  the 
trenches,  no  one  drilling,  no  one  serving  on  special 
duty,  there  is  a  certain  amount  of  apathy  and  pessim- 
ism.   But  in  Russia  there  is  no  apathy.    The  whole 


RUSSIANS  131 

atmosphere  is  one  of  eagerness  and  optimism.  They 
are  full  of  thankfulness  for  the  things  the  war  has 
brought  to  Russia  —  national  enthusiasm,  national 
tenderness,  national  temperance,  and  moral  unanimity. 
The  war  has  closed  the  vodka  shop ;  it  has  healed  the 
age-long  fratricidal  strife  with  Poland;  it  has  shown 
to  the  world  and  to  themselves  the  simple  strength  and 
bravery  of  the  Russian  soldiers,  and  the  new  sobriety 
and  efficiency  of  their  officers.  It  has,  in  fact,  given  a 
real  future  to  Russia  to  think  about;  it  has  shed,  as 
from  a  great  lamp,  light  on  the  great  road  of  Russian 
destiny.  Russians  have  always  dimly  divined  that 
they  were  a  young  nation  of  genius,  they  have  held 
faith  in  themselves  despite  dark  hours ;  but  now  they 
feel  confirmed  and  certain  of  their  destiny,  of  their 
progress  from  being  an  ill-cemented  patchwork  of 
countries  to  being  a  single  body,  feeling  in  all  limbs  the 
beat  of  a  single  heart ;  of  their  progress  from  quietness 
and  vast  ilKteracy  to  being  confident  possessors  of  a 
great  strong  voice  in  the  counsels  of  nations ;  of  their 
progress  from  denial  and  anarchism  and  individual 
obstinacy  to  affirmation,  co-operation,  and  readiness 
to  serve.  As  nations  go,  Britain  is  like  a  man  of  forty- 
five,  Germany  like  a  man  of  thirty,  but  Russia  like  a 
genius  who  is  just  eighteen.  It  is  the  young  man  that 
you  find  in  Russia,  virginal,  full  of  mystery,  looking 
out  at  the  world  full  of  colour  and  holiness  and  passion 
and  sordidness. 


132  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

Despite  the  beauty  and  seK-sufficiency  of  the  old 
Hfe,  Russia  is  definitely  committing  herself  to  the  new. 
She  is  going  to  have  a  puritan  intolerance  for  sin,  she 
is  beginning  to  manifest  that  passion  for  solid  educa- 
tion that  has  marked  puritan  Scotland,  America,  Ger- 
many. More  and  more  people  are  going  to  take  up 
with  materialism  and  ethics  and  agnosticism.  Not 
that  Russian  pilgrimaging  or  asceticism  or  religious 
observance  can  ever  cease,  or  that  the  mystical  out- 
look will  be  lost;  but  that  Westernism  and  success 
and  national  facetiousness  and  lightheartedness  will 
be  so  much  more  clamorous. 

I  am  a  great  admirer  of  the  popular  saint.  Father 
^Seraphim.  He  is  the  Russian  St.  Francis  —  he  tamed 
the  bears  and  the  wolves  and  the  birds  of  the  forest  of 
Sarof .  He  was  so  holy  that  bears,  so  far  from  hurting 
him,  actually  inconvenienced  him  a  little  by  their 
ofl&cious  helpfulness.  But  his  chief  claim  to  holiness 
Hes  in  his  mystical  denial  of  life.  He  lived  alone  in 
the  forest,  wore  a  heavy  cross  on  his  back,  prayed  a 
thousand  days  and  a  thousand  nights  still  kneeling 
on  the  same  stone,  he  made  a  vow  of  silence  and  did 
not  open  his  mouth  to  speak  for  twenty-five  years, 
and  when  the  end  of  the  twenty-five  years  came  he 
remained  silent  for  ten  years  more.  Such  an  act  of 
denial  is  called  a  podvig. 

I  spoke  of  the  podvig  this  autumn  to  Loosha,  a 
woman  friend  of  mine  of  whom  I  wrote  in  "  Changing 


RUSSIANS  133 

Russia."  I  was  working  out  the  essential  idea  of 
Russia's  religion. 

"I  like  to  think  that  even  now,  in  all  this  noise  of 
the  war,  you  have  in  the  background  of  Russia  men 
and  women  who  have  taken,  like  Father  Seraphim, 
this  oath  of  silence,  who  will  never  utter-  a  word  whether 
Russia  wins  or  seems  to  be  in  danger.  It  is  an  astonish- 
ing fact  that  St.  Seraphim  was  silent  throughout  the 
whole  time  of  the  great  Napoleonic  campaigns,  and  did 
not  utter  a  word  even  in  the  culminating  distress  of 
the  capture  of  Moscow  in  181 2." 

So  said  I  to  Loosha. 

Loosha  replied : 

"  That  is  old-fashioned.  Seraphim's  greater  feat,  and 
that  which  did  indeed  make  him  a  holy  man,  was  when 
at  last  he  renounced  silence,  and  after  thirty-five  years 
opened  his  mouth  once  more  to  converse,  not  oracu- 
larly, but  kindly  and  cheerfully  and  wisely  with  his 
fellow  beings.  I  think  spring  is  a  greater  victory  than 
autumn.  It  is  a  victory  over  death,  whereas  autumn 
is  a  victory  over  life." 

To  this.  Western  minds  will  readily  give  assent.  It 
is  a  purely  Western  idea.  But  it  is  a  new  feeling  in 
Russia.  A  few  years  ago  Loosha  was  of  opinion  that 
she  herself  was  really  dead,  and  that  the  woman  who 
spoke  to  me  was  but  a  shadow,  a  ghost,  something 
without  warmth,  without  heart,  without  hope.  She 
was  glad  to  have  conquered  life.  Now  she  wants  to 
conquer  death  and  win  again. 


134  RUSSIA  AND   THE   WORLD 

Russia  the  silent  one,  silent  for  twenty-five  years, 
and  then  silent  for  ten  years  more,  is  either  speaking 
now  or  is  about  to  speak.  The  spirit  moves  mysteri- 
ously in  her.  She  begins  to  know  that  a  new  time  is  at 
hand. 


II 

The  Germans 

At  Bielostock  I  met  a  peasant  soldier  from  Ossovets, 
a  dispatch-bearer.  "How  are  you  getting  on  out 
there?"  I  asked. 

"They  run,"  said  he. 

"That's  an  important  victory,  isn't  it?"  I  replied. 

"Their  Emperor  was  there,  somewhere  about  Osso- 
vets," said  the  soldier.  "If  we'd  only  known  in  time 
we'd  a  taken  him." 

"But  he  would  have  been  in  a  very  safe  position,"  I 
urged. 

"Oh,  we'd  a  had  him,  even  if  we  had  lost  thousands. 
If  they'd  told  us,  we  would  have  done  anything  to  take 
him.     He's  more  than  a  flag  —  he's  their  Tsar." 

This  is  the  spirit  of  the  Russian  soldiers  just  now.  If 
their  officers  ask  them  to  take  a  hill  they  will  take  it,  or 
storm  a  fort  against  terrible  artillery  fire,  they  will 
storm  it.  They  have  got  going,  they  are  on  the  wave 
of  a  tremendous  national  enthusiasm.  They  fight  with 
cries  and  shouts,  with  songs.  They  have  to  be  con- 
stantly reproved  for  marching  too  fast,  and  for  treading 
on  one  another's  heels  at  the  fording  of  the  rivers. 

135 


136  RUSSIA   AND   THE  WORLD 

They  need  no  band,  no  banjo  to  "spur  the  rearguard 
to  a  walk."  They  are  very  heavily  clad,  clumsily 
shod,  burdened  with  a  heavy  kit,  from  which  dangle 
pots  and  kettles.  They  live  on  the  most  frugal  diet, 
and  do  not  grumble  when  they  starve.  They  sleep 
under  the  open  sky  these  wet,  cold  nights  of  autumn. 
They  have  the  longest  patience  in  the  world,  and  yet 
they  have  also  an  extraordinary  verve  and  eagerness. 
This  is  a  wonderful  combination,  emotion  on  a  founda- 
tion of  patience. 

The  Germans  are  stubborn,  they  are  persistent  and 
determined.  They  are  condemnatory  and  angry,  and 
are  capable  of  a  fine  rage.  They  are  self-confident  and 
plucky.  They  are  what  we  English  call  "nasty."  As 
brutes  they  have  most  in  common  with  the  wild  boar, 
most  vicious  and  dangerous  of  animals.  On  the  whole, 
one  would  back  the  Germans  against  anyone  in  the 
world  for  sheer  devilry.  One  would  also  back  them 
for  their  mastery  and  assimilation  of  the  results  of 
scientific  invention  and  material  progress.  They  are 
the  most  accurate  and  best-equipped  people. 

But  it  is  not  the  devil  in  man  that  wins  in  the  long 
run.  The  devil  in  man  is  terrible,  but  it  is  the  God 
in  man  that  gives  victory  and  happiness.  Nietzsche 
wrote  frequently  of  the  "God,  devil,  and  worm  in 
man,"  and  mistaken  Nietzscheanism  always  tends  to 
the  development  of  the  devil  in  man,  exclusive  of  the 
other  two.    The  Russian,   as  Dostoieffsky  wrote,  is 


THE   GERMANS  137 

the  God-carrier.  You  must  appeal  to  the  religious  in 
him ;  you  must  appeal  to  his  emotions.  But  you  have 
to  appeal  to  the  bad  temper  of  the  Germans  to  make 
them  go. 

Russians  versus  Germans  is  Imagination  versus 
Will.  Both  will  and  imagination  will  carry  men  far, 
but  imagination  will  carry  farther.  For  the  imagina- 
tive soldier  has  his  eyes  set  on  an  unearthly  prize,  and 
he  forgets  his  body  and  all  the  limitations  of  his  body, 
and  goes  forward  in  a  state  of  rapture. 

One  of  the  features  of  the  present  life  of  Russia  is 
the  going  over  of  a  considerable  number  of  Lutherans 
to  the  Orthodox  Russian  Church.  I  was  present  at 
the  receiving  at  the  font  of  two  such  converts  —  a  most 
impressive  service.  They  were  two  women,  Russian 
subjects,  but  German  by  extraction.  It  was  evidently 
a  very  great  event  in  their  lives  —  their  faces  were  a 
picture  of  emotional  excitement  and  childish  happiness. 
I  suppose  many  of  us  who  do  not  formally  enter  or  fall 
away  from  Churches  have  in  spirit  made  that  transfer- 
ence from  Puritanism  to  orthodoxy.  It  is  always  a 
tremendous  personal  event,  the  transference  of  religion 
from  the  intellect  to  the  emotions,  the  melting  of  the 
ice  of  personality,  the  change  from  a  rigid  setting  of 
the  Hps  to  the  filming  of  the  eyes. 

Nietzsche,  of  whom  many  random  things  are  being 
said  in  this  the  time  of  our  indignation  and  sorrow, 
detested  the  modern  German  puritans.     "When  they 


138  RUSSIA  AND   THE  WORLD 

say  I  am  just,  it  soundeth  as  if  they  had  said  I  am 
just  —  revenged.  Thus  spake  Zarathustra."  Nietz- 
sche understood  that  Germany's  self-righteousness 
sprang  from  a  sort  of  hatred  of  Hfe  and  of  men. 

I  am  sorry  words  are  being  said  against  Nietzsche. 
He  was  one  of  my  teachers ;  I  learned  much  of  him.  I 
am  sure  many  British  who  have  rifles  on  their  shoulders 
to-day  have  learned  of  Nietzsche,  and  have  a  warm 
place  in  their  hearts  for  him.  They  have  taken  his 
works  with  them,  and  Zarathustra  in  some  man's 
breast  pocket  must  have  saved  him  from  an  evil  ounce 
of  lead. 

Nietzsche  was  of  Polish  origin,  and  consequently 
nearer  to  the  Russian  spirit  than  to  the  German. 
Although  he  seems  anti-Christian,  he  was  on  the  road 
to  transcendent  Christianity,  He  was  a  great  admirer 
of  Dostoieffsky,  whose  work  he  introduced  to  Germany. 
Nietzsche,  always  half-mad,  alternately  possessed  by 
devils  and  angels,  might  have  been  a  character  in  one 
of  Dostoievsky's  novels.  For  the  rest,  Nietzsche  was 
very  fond  of  the  French  people,  and  preferred  to  read 
his  own  works  in  the  French  translation  rather  than  in 
the  original.  He  greatly  admired  Stendhal  and  he 
abhorred  Kant.  The  spectacle  of  the  genius  of  Napo- 
leon made  life  worth  living  for  him;  the  success  of 
Wagner  so  mortified  him  that  it  must  have  hastened 
his  madness  by  ten  years  at  least.  He  disliked  the 
English,  it  is  true,  but  that  was  because  it  was  in  Eng- 


THE   GERMANS  139 

land  chiefly  that  the  nineteenth  century  slept  and 
would  not  wake  up.  Nietzsche,  despite  the  fact  that 
he  was  a  little,  nervous  man  of  great  physical  weak- 
ness, is  yet  far  the  most  powerful  force  of  his  age.  He 
seems  anti- Christian,  he  was  mistaken  in  his  fundamen- 
tal notion  of  the  coming  of  the  Superman,  but  his  work 
is  full  of  a  new  poetry.  It  is  insisted  that  he  was 
brutal  in  what  he  said  about  women.  That  is  some- 
thing personal  in  Nietzsche.  Women  wounded  him. 
With  his  terrible  physical  suffering  and  his  marvellous 
vision  and  passion  he  was  in  need  of  the  love  and  faith 
of  a  real  woman.  But  it  was  not  his  lot  to  find  such  a 
woman.  He  needed  a  harbour  and  an  anchor,  but  it 
was  his  lot  to  toss  ever  on  the  shelterless  sea. 

Not  a  word  is  breathed  against  Nietzsche  in  Russia ; 
too  many  lovers  there  have  whispered  the  poetry  of 
Zarathustra  to  one  another.  There  is  mistaken  Nietz- 
scheanism  there,  and  talk  of  "all  is  permitted,"  but 
that  is  merely  the  vulgarisation  of  the  age.  Almost 
all  the  noble  spirits  of  modern  Russia  have  drunk  deep 
of  the  wells  of  Nietzsche.  As  I  said,  the  Nietzsche 
family  sprang  originally  from  Poland.  He  was  really 
a  Pole,  a  Slav  —  the  German  spirit  is  merely  the  dross 
in  his  writing.  It  is  the  Slavic  that  is  the  gold.  As 
the  great  Russian  tale-writer  Kouprin  writes  in  an  open 
letter  to  Arthur  Schnitzler :  "Perhaps  you  think 
Nietzsche  was  one  with  you  in  your  thoughts.  No! 
Even  we,  your  present  enemies,  could  not  gather  in 


I40  RUSSIA   AND   THE  WORLD 

our  souls  so  much  hatred  and  contempt  for  you  Prus- 
sians as  Nietzsche  poured  forth  in  his  works." 

The  true  admirer  of  the  Germans  was  our  own 
Carlyle,  whom  Nietzsche  cheerfully  dismisses  as  "a 
muddlehead."  Recent  visitors  to  Ecclefechan,  Car- 
lyle's  birthplace,  will  probably  have  seen  the  scarcely 
faded  wreaths  sent  by  the  Kaiser  to  the  memory  of 
the  Briton  whom  Germany  honours  most.  Carlyle's 
belief  in  the  Germans  and  in  their  ways  was  colossal. 
Did  he  not  waste  the  ripeness  of  his  life  poring  over 
the  musty  records  of  German  military  exploits?  In 
the  history  of  this  war,  and  our  re-estimate  of  the 
Germans,  we  shall  have  to  reconsider  Carlyle  and  the 
"marching  song  of  the  Teutonic  nations." 

Maurice  Maeterlinck's  contribution  to  the  question 
of  the  destiny  of  the  Germans  was  one  much  considered 
in  Russia,  Maeterlinck  holding  an  extremely  high  place 
in  the  esteem  of  the  intelligentia.  It  was  translated  at 
once  into  Russian  and  much  commented  upon.  It  was 
hailed  with  enthusiasm  as  giving  a  strong  lead,  and 
showing  how  the  West  had  made  up  its  mind  to  carry 
the  war  through  to  a  terrible  end.  I  must  say  I  felt 
somewhat  aghast  at  the  hatred  of  Germany. 

"They  will  say  to  us  afterwards  that  the  unfor- 
tunate German  peoples  were  only  the  victims  of  their 
monarch  and  their  system.  That  on  the  Germany  we 
know,  so  cordial  and  so  kind,  no  blame  should  fall  — 
but  only  on  Prussia  —  impatient,  hateful,  aggressive 


THE   GERMANS  141 

Prussia.  The  domestic,  peace-loving  Bavarians,  the 
kind,  hospitable  dwellers  on  the  shores  of  the  Rhine, 
the  Silesians,  Saxons,  and  I  know  not  who  else,  will 
become  at  once  as  white  as  snow,  less  offending  than 
the  sheep  on  the  pasture  land. 

"But  now,  whilst  we  stand  face  to  face  with  reahty, 
let  us  pronounce  sentence  :  'The  German  Empire  must 
be  destroyed  as  a  wasp's  nest.  The  Germans  must  be 
destroyed  as  we  destroy  a  wasp's  nest,  since  we  know 
the  wasp's  nest  can  never  become  a  bee's  nest.' 

"  If  eighty  million  innocent  people  support  a  monster- 
Kaiser,  it  shows  simply  the  superficiality  of  their  in- 
nocence and  the  inner  falsehood  of  their  nature. 
Should  even  a  thousand  years  of  civihsation  pass  in 
peace,  the  subconscious  spirit  of  the  Germans  will  still 
be  as  it  is  to-day.     It  will  still  be  ready  to  show  itself." 

These  are  significant  passages  in  the  Russian  ver- 
sion. Its  tone  is  in  strange  contrast  to  the  contribu- 
tion of  our  J.  M.  Barrie,  where  the  spirit  of  culture 
comforts  the  stricken  Kaiser  with  the  words:  "If 
God  is  with  the  Alhes,  Germany  will  not  be  destroyed." 

We  British  have  a  considerable  amount  of  affection 
for  our  foe.  The  soldiers  especially  are  on  very  good 
terms  with  the  soldiers  they  are  fighting  —  despite 
white  flag  incidents,  bad  German  tricks,  atrocities, 
cathedral-shelling,  cutting  out  the  eyes  of  the  wounded, 
and  the  Hke.  There  is  a  weakness  towards  Germany 
latent  in  our  people,  even  an  unfortunate  weakness. 


142  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

When  Germany  is  clearly  beaten  a  great  many  people 
will  raise  their  voice  in  her  behalf.  As  yet,  though, 
Germany  has  to  be  beaten. 

Maeterlinck  says,  "Only  from  the  depths  of  the 
most  fearful  and  cruel  injustice  can  we  see  what  Jus- 
tice is."  That  is  an  astonishingly  wrong  utterance, 
but  it  explains  the  fury  of  Maeterlinck's  condemnation 
of  the  Germans,  and  it  is  a  noble  explanation.  Maeter- 
linck is  a  Belgian.  How  much  more  angry,  how  much 
more  eager  for  German  blood  are  the  Belgians  and  the 
French,  those  who  have  suffered,  than  we  are !  If  the 
fortune  of  war  goes  rapidly  against  the  foe,  and  Bel- 
gians and  French  get  the  Germans  on  the  run,  there  is 
likely  to  be  such  revenge  and  plunder  and  ravaging 
that  those  in  England  who  would  spare  Germany  wiU 
find  they  have  to  witness  the  clearing  off  of  a  hate  of 
which  as  yet  they  have  but  a  sentimental  notion. 
Iron  has  entered  the  souls  of  Belgian  and  French.  The 
French  have  a  long  score  to  clear  off  and  they  at  least 
will  not  be  inclined  to  make  peace  till  Germany  is  in 
the  dust,  till  they  have  exacted  to  the  uttermost 
farthing  and  the  last  drop,  the  treasure  and  blood 
exacted  by  the  Germans  in  1870.  In  weighing  up  the 
chances  of  the  later  stages  of  the  war  let  us  not  under- 
estimate the  driving  power  of  French  and  Belgian 
hate.  Later  on  we  shall  stand  and  watch  the  French 
taking  vengeance.  We  do  not  perhaps  hate  sufficiently 
bitterly  to  do  all  that  they  will  do. 


Ill 

The  Future  of  the  Poles 

A  POLISH  peasant  woman  and  a  Russian  baba  were 
talking  in  the  train.  "What  dreadful  things  the  Ger- 
mans are  doing!"  says  the  Russian  woman,  a  heavily 
clothed  old  wife  who  has  come  i,ooo  versts  by  train 
in  order  to  find  and  nurse  her  son  who  is  seriously 
wounded.  "What  things  they  are  doing  to  women, 
to  the  churches.  They've  ruined  a  great  Cathedral 
somewhere,  I've  read." 

"Yes,"  says  the  Polish  woman,  "and  our  Pope  has 
written  against  them." 

"A  new  one  isn't  he,  surely?" 

"Yes,  the  old  Pope  died  at  the  beginning  of  the  war ; 
it  broke  his  heart." 

"Trying  to  make  peace  among  his  children,  eh? 
Clearly  the  Austrians  are  his,  aren't  they?" 

"Yes,  they  are  ours,  too." 

"Ah,  how  they  oppress  the  poor  Slavs,  the  Czechs, 
the  Serbs,  the  others.  Barbarians,  that's  what  they 
are." 

"Yes,  barbarians." 

This  word  all  the  Russian  peasants  have  got  hold  of. 

143 


144  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

Ask  the  peasant  what  he  thinks  of  the   Germans. 
"Barbarians,"  he  answers. 

But  it  is  an  interesting  opposition  that  of  Pole  and 
Austrian,  both  Roman  Cathohcs.  It  is  rather  sur- 
prising that  the  Poles,  extremely  pious  Roman  Catho- 
hcs as  they  are,  have  no  particular  sympathy  with 
their  co-religionists  in  Austria,  and  that  the  Pope 
throws  the  balance  of  his  power  rather  into  the  scale 
against  Germany  and  Austria.  The  fact  is^  Rome 
stands  to  gain  far  more  from  the  success  of  the  Alhes 
than  from  German  domination.  German  success 
means  a  stronger  Protestant  influence  in  the  world 
generally  —  it  means  certainly  a  stronger  influence  in 
Austria;  even  the  unification  of  the  German  and 
Austrian  empires  is  possible.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  success  of  Russia  means,  or  ought  to  mean,  I 
presume,  the  establishment  of  the  Poles  as  a  nation 
once  more,  though  under  the  protection  of  the  Tsar. 
What  Rome  has  lost  in  France  she  can  make  up  in 
autonomous  Poland  (and  autonomous  Ireland)  when 
once  the  war  has  ended  in  the  dispersal  of  the  German 
dream  of  empire. 

Poland,  if  restored,  would  be  a  great  Roman  Catholic 
country.  Of  that  there  can  be  no  doubt.  The  Poles 
are  a  passionately  national  people.  Nationalism  is 
the  biggest  thing  with  them,  and  in  their  nationalism  is 
included  necessarily  their  religious  faith.  The  Russians 
have  tried  in  vain  to  Russify  Poland  ;  Poland  remains 


THE  FUTURE   OF  THE  POLES         145 

crazily  Polish.  The  Poles  have  emigrated  to  America 
in  enormous  numbers,  but  in  America  they  do  not 
tend  to  enter  the  choir  dance  of  the  races.  They  live 
together,  as  I  have  seen  them  in  the  mining  villages 
of  Pennsylvania,  and  have  their  political  clubs,  and  talk 
their  own  old  language,  and  read  their  own  books, 
and  write  poems  about  Poland.  They  are  a  very 
poetical  people ;  every  third  Pole  writes  verses.  They 
are  not  in  such  numbers  as  the  Irish  in  America,  and 
since  they  are  not  English-speaking  they  have  not  the 
power  of  the  Irish,  but  by  virtue  of  their  political 
organisation  they  are  more  like  the  Irish  than  other 
races. 

And  despite  the  fact  that  Poles  and  Russians  are 
equally  Slavonic  and  are  psychologically  akin,  yet  how 
the  Poles  have  hated  the  Russians !  It  would  be  im- 
possible to  hate  more.  The  hate  of  brothers,  when 
they  do  hate,  is  worse  than  the  hate  of  those  who  are 
unrelated.  It  used  to  be  almost  equivalent  to  an 
insult  to  speak  Russian  in  a  Polish  shop,  or  order  your 
dinner  in  Russian  at  the  restaurant.  Now,  however, 
things  have  changed. 

I  have  just  been  staying  in  the  fine  old  city  of  Vilna, 
a  city  of  courtly  Poles,  the  home  of  many  of  the  old 
noble  famihes  of  Poland.  It  is  now  thronged  with 
Russian  officers  and  soldiers.  Along  the  main  street 
is  an  incessant  procession  of  troops,  and  as  you  look 
down  you  see  vistas  of  bayonet  spikes  waving  like 


146  RUSSIA   AND   THE  WORLD 

reeds  in  a  wind.  As  you  lie  in  bed  at  night  you  listen 
to  the  tramp,  tramp,  tramp  of  soldiers.  Or  you  look 
out  at  the  window  and  see  wagons  and  guns  passing 
for  twenty  minutes  on  end,  or  you  see  prancing  over  the 
cobbles  and  the  mud  the  Cossacks  of  the  Don,  of  the 
Volga,  of  Seven  Rivers.  In  the  days  of  the  revolution- 
ary outburst  the  Poles  bit  their  lips  in  hate  at  the 
sight  of  the  Russian  soldiers,  they  cursed  under  their 
breath,  darted  out  with  revolvers  and  shot,  aimed 
bombs.  To-day  they  smile,  tears  run  down  their  cheeks ; 
they  even  cheer.  Whoever  would  have  thought  to  see 
the  day  when  the  Poles  would  cheer  the  Russian  troops 
marching  through  the  streets  of  their  own  cities ! 

The  Russians  are  forgiven.  They  come  now  to 
deliver  the  Slavs,  not,  as  formerly,  to  trample  on  them. 
Go  into  a  restaurant  and  order  your  dinner  in  Russian 
and  you  are  smiled  at  and  treated  specially.  To  be  a 
Russian  is  to  be  a  friend.  The  Russians,  also,  with 
that  complete  turn-round  of  feeling  of  which  the  Sla- 
vonic peoples  are  so  capable,  are  quite  affectionate 
towards  the  Poles.  It  is  said  that  since  the  proclama- 
tion of  the  Grand  Duke  Nicholas  there  has  been  quite 
a  demand  for  Polish  grammars  and  dictionaries  on  the 
part  of  Russians  wishing  to  learn  Polish.  I,  for  my 
part,  directly  I  read  that  proclamation,  decided  to 
learn  some  Polish,  for  I  understood  that  Poland  had 
suddenly  begun  to  count. 

A  very  touching  spectacle  may  be  seen  every  day 


THE  FUTURE   OF  THE  POLES         147 

just  now  at  the  Sacred  Gate  of  Vilna.  Above  the 
gateway  is  a  chapel  with  wide-open  doors  showing  a 
richly  gilded  and  flower-decked  image  of  the  Virgin. 
At  one  side  stands  a  row  of  leaden  organ  pipes,  at  the 
other  stands  a  priest.  Music  is  wafted  through  the 
air  with  incense  and  the  sound  of  prayers.  Down 
below  in  the  narrow,  muddy  roadway  kneel  many  poor 
men  and  women  with  prayer  books  in  their  hands. 
They  are  Poles.  But  through  the  gateway  come 
incessantly,  all  day  and  all  night,  Russian  troops  going 
to  the  front.  And  as  he  approaches,  every  soldier, 
be  he  officer  or  private,  lifts  his  hat  and  passes  through 
the  praying  throng  uncovered.  This  is  beautiful. 
Let  Russia  always  be  so  in  the  presence  of  the  Mother 
of  Poland. 

No  nation  in  modern  history  has  been  treated  the 
way  Poland  has  been  treated,  divided  up  Hke  spoil  and 
given  to  the  three  Emperors  of  Europe  —  living  spoil. 
The  history  of  Poland  previous  to  partition  is  one  of 
splendour  and  gallantry.  A  Dumas  would  have  found 
in  that  history  stories  as  gay  and  brave  as  in  the  his- 
tory of  France.  The  Poles  were  a  bright  and  interest- 
ing contrast  to  their  neighbours,  the  laborious  Germans 
and  the  frozen  Russians.  They  were  an  energetic, 
tireless  people;  also  they  would  have  made  out  of 
Poland  something  distinctive.  But  Fate  came  across 
them.  The  wonderful  nineteenth  century  came  on 
and  Poland  was  not.    Poland  was  denied  the  opportu- 


148  RUSSIA  AND   THE   WORLD 

nities  of  other  powers.  England  built  up  her  mighty 
civilisation;  Germany  grew  into  form  and  was  con- 
scious of  itself,  and  learned  to  speak  with  a  strong, 
national  voice ;  even  Russia  emerged  out  of  the  forests 
and  the  vast  distances  and  built  up  a  nineteenth- 
century  civilisation.  But  Poland  lay  under  the  feet 
of  conquerors. 

To  such  a  poignancy  did  Polish  sorrow  come,  to 
such  a  degree  of  historical  melancholy,  that  the  PoHsh 
poets  of  the  seventies  came  to  write  of  Poland  as  the 
Messianic  nation,  the  nation  and  the  country  that  must 
be  ■  crucified  and  divided  up,  that  must  die  and  be 
buried.  They  formed  a  prophecy  that  through  the 
sufferings  of  Poland  the  world  would  find  regeneration. 
The- Poles,  many  of  them,  learned  to  participate  in  a 
♦S^reHgious  sorrow  and  find  the  accompanying  religious 
consolation.  Poland  had  to  die  that  the  world  through 
Poland  might  be  saved ;  Poland  will  rise  again  as  a  sign 
that  every  nationahty  has  an  immortality. 

So  now  in  this  great  struggle  wherein  the  heavens 
are  rent  over  the  agony  of  Teutons  and  Slavs  the  Poles 
see  a  dove  descending  with  the  promise  of  peace. 
Poland  is  about  to  rise  again. 

The  promises  of  poetry  and  religion,  however,  seem 
much  more  certain  than  the  promises  of  politicians  and 
of  monarchs.  If  we  turn  from  the  melancholy  beauty 
of  this  Polish  idea  to  the  sharp-edged  actualities  of 
poHtics,  it  is  possible  to  feel  that  the  restoration  of  the 


THE   FUTURE   OF   THE   POLES  149 

Polish  nation  is  not  so  certain,  not  so  likely  that  the 
providence  of  the  Tsar  will  look  God-dispensed  as  man- 
dispensed. 

I  believe  that  if  Germany  is  thoroughly  beaten  in 
the  field,  and  granted  not  honourable  but  humiliating 
terms  of  peace,  it  will  be  possible  to  take  German 
Poland  from  her,  and  from  Austria  Austrian  Poland, 
though  it  means  tearing  them  from  the  living  flesh  of 
Germany*  and  Austria  respectively,  and  these  maybe 
added  to  Russian  Poland  and  given  a  constitution 
under  the  protectorate  of  the  Tsar.  No  new  monarch 
is  likely  to  be  found  for  Poland,  for  the  simple  reason 
that  monarchs  of  small  states  cause  much  trouble  and 
that  the  jealousy  of  the  courts  of  Servia,  Bulgaria, 
Rumania,  and  Greece  have  caused  so  much  trouble 
and  misunderstanding  that  the  Tsar  is  not  likely  to 
institute  another  court.  Collective  Poland  is  likely  to 
be  given  a  qualified  home  rule,  she  will  have  consider- 
able control  over  her  own  finances  and  expenditure, 
the  Polish  language  will  become  current  at  such  univer- 
sities as  she  may  prefer  to  make  pecuHarly  Polish,  she 
will  have  power  to  organise  the  education  of  her  people 
and  to  make  herself  a  strong  and  loyal  nation.  What 
Mother  Russia  wants  to  see  in  Poland  is  an  eldest  son 
at  her  side. 

Of  course,  when  the  war  is  over,  and  if  the  fabric  of 

*  German  Poland  takes  in  Dantzig  and  Posen  and  extends  to  within  fifty 
miles  of  Berlin.     Konigsberg,  however,  does  not  belong  to  ancient  Poland. 


I50  RUSSIA  AND   THE  WORLD 

civilisation  holds  together,  Russia  has  a  great,  a  difficult 
task.  It  would  be  much  easier  to  evade  her  obligations 
than  to  fulfil  them.  But  she  is  not  likely  to  evade  them. 
There  is  every  indication  that  she  has  entered  on  a  new 
era  as  far  as  the  government  of  Poland  is  concerned. 
Pan  Slavism  is  going  to  progress  positively  by  way  of 
encouraging  what  is  truly  Slavonic,  rather  than  nega- 
tively, as  of  old,  by  the  repression  of  what  was  not 
Slavonic. 

When  once  the  war  is  over,  Poland  will  be  one  of  the 
most  interesting  countries  in  the  world.  All  eyes  will 
be  turned  on  Russia  to  see  how  she  will  work  out  the 
great  problem  of  giving  Poland  restitution.  It  is  a 
problem  that  will  task  the  genius  of  Russia,  and  test 
her  patience  and  gentleness. 

Just  to  touch  on  one  or  two  of  the  difficulties,  there 
is  the  jealousy  of  the  Churches,  of  the  ecclesiastics  of 
the  churches.  The  Eastern  Orthodox  Church  has  very 
little  in  common  with  the  Roman  Cathohc  Church. 
It  is  indeed  nearer  to  the  Church  of  England  than  to 
Rome.  But  it  will  have  to  tolerate  a  fervently  Roman 
Catholic  Poland,  and  trust  Polish  nationalism  to  give 
Roman  Catholicism  what  may  be  called  an  Eastern 
tinge  or  complexion. 

The  peasantry  of  Poland  are  most  simple  and  pious. 
Of  the  Roman  Catholics  who  arrive  at  Jerusalem  on 
pilgrimage,  some  of  the  most  humble  and  sincere  are 
the  Poles.    There  is  a  redeeming  touch  of  mysticism 


THE  FUTURE   OF  THE  POLES         151 

in  Polish  religion.  Though  the  Church  accepts  the 
responsibility  for  all  dogma,  and  would  relieve  the 
lay  person  of  discovering  anything  for  himself,  or  of 
learning  anything  individually  in  his  heart,  yet  by 
nature  the  Pole  has  visions,  sees  the  mystic  side  of 
things,  and  has  gleams  of  natural  religion.  Of  course, 
the  political  influence  of  Rome  will  be  greatly  suspected 
by  the  Russian  authorities.  But  everything  is  to  be 
gained  by  trusting  the  Poles,  rather  than  by  mis- 
trusting them. 

The  Government  of  Russia  will  fear  that  under  the 
cover  and  protection  of  autonomy  the  Poles  will  be 
able  to  conspire  effectively  for  complete  independence. 
Conspiracy  is  congenial  to  the  minds  of  the  Poles  — 
they  have  been  great  conspirators  and  plotters  — 
though  necessarily  Polish  plots  have  up  to  now,  thanks 
to  the  vigilance  of  Russian  police  and  the  power  of 
Russian  armies,  had  very  Uttle  success.  It  is  difficult 
to  believe  that  when  the  Poles  have  extra  chances  they 
will  not  work  together  for  a  complete  national  independ- 
ence, for  an  army  of  their  own,  frontiers  and  tariff- 
barriers  between  them  and  Russia,  foreign  alliances 
and  the  rest.  This  fear  may  easily  lessen  the  amount  of 
freedom  granted  to  Poland. 

One  stumbling  block  is  the  mutual  jealousies  of  the 
Churches,  another  is  Polish  ambition,  a  third  that  I 
may  mention  is  the  presence  in  Poland  of  almost  all 
the  Jews  in  the  Russian  Empire.     There  is  no  love 


152  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

lost  between  the  Jews  and  the  Poles.  They  have  been 
fellow-sufferers  and  have  merged  their  personal  dishke 
of  one  another  in  their  common  hatred  of  the  Russian 
autocracy.  But  that  is  all:  the  estabHshment  of 
several  million  Jews  in  Poland  has  been  one  of  the 
injustices  towards  Poland.  There  are  considerably 
more  Jews  than  Russians  in  Poland  —  the  country 
has  rather  been  Judaised  than  Russianised.  Jewry 
has  given  to  Poland  its  characteristic  complexion.  In 
many  districts  the  Jews  outnumber  the  Poles. 

The  Jews  will  hope  to  profit  by  Polish  emancipation, 
and  reaUse  themselves  as  a  nation  in  Poland.  That 
is  a  danger.  It  would  mean  the  continuous  persecu- 
tion of  Poland  by  the  Russians,  who,  as  long  as  they 
remain  Christian  in  the  Byzantine  sense,  will  always 
be  in  opposition  to  Judaism  and  that  materialism  for 
which  in  their  eyes  Judaism  stands.  Jewry  must  keep 
only  a  second  or  third  place  in  Poland.  To  the  estab- 
lishment of  that  end  greater  facilities  for  emigration 
to  the  United  States  will  probably  be  afforded  the 
Jews.  There  the  Jews  are  greatly  in  the  ascendant, 
and  are  indeed  reaHsing  themselves  as  a  nation  as  never 
before.  Western  Christianity,  with  its  insistence  on 
ethics  rather  than  on  religious  sense,  finds  nothing  in- 
compatible in  Judaism.  America  is  for  Russian  Jews, 
as  Mary  Antin  pointed  out,  the  true  promised  land. 

The  Jews,  with  that  sweet  reasonableness,  kindness, 
and  common  sense  which  distinguish  their  life  when 


THE   FUTURE   OF   THE  POLES  153 

they  are  not  too  embittered  by  persecution,  will  perhaps 
see  that  no  good  end  is  served  by  fanning  malice  against 
Russia,  and  they  will  turn  their  eyes  rather  towards  the 
West  than  towards  the  East.  So  Poland  will  escape 
Jewish  predomination,  and  also  political  deprivations 
on  account  of  Jewish  conditions. 

But  this  statement  of  the  case  is  all  on  the  assump- 
tion that  German  and  Austrian  Poland  will  be  added 
to  Russian  Poland.  We  leave  out  of  account  the 
possibility  that  Germany  may  not  be  so  utterly  beaten 
that  she  will  be  forced  to  part  with  a  great  stretch  of 
thoroughly  Germanised  territory.  If  the  war  leaves 
the  old  Eastern  frontier  line  untouched,  Russia  will  not 
feel  that  she  is  in  a  position  to  resurrect  Poland.  For 
she  would  only  have  charge  of  a  third  of  the  old  Polish 
land.  One  thing,  however,  is  certain,  even  under  these 
conditions,  and  that  is  PoHsh  and  Russian  friendship. 
Russia  will  do  what  she  can  for  her  Polish  subjects. 
As  we  all  hope  for  complete  victory  in  the  strife,  so  we 
look  beyond  the  struggle  to  one  of  the  first  fruits  of 
peace,  the  reconstitution  of  the  ancient  land  of  Poland, 
the  sewing  together  of  the  mantle  that  the  Emperors 
divided  between  them. 

For  the  time  being,  however,  the  hurly-burly  rages. 
The  Russians  are  noble  in  war,  and  Poland  waits, 
gently  hoping,  and  fearing  also,  like  a  woman  who  is 
to  be  married  if  her  soldier  comes  home  safe  from  the 
war. 


IV 

The  Future  of  the  Jews 

Russia's  great  instinctive  struggle  is  against  Western- 
ism.  She  has  a  great  treasure  in  her  national  life,  but 
she  does  not  know  how  she  came  by  it  and  does  not 
know  how  to  keep  it.  But  she  continually  notices  how 
she  is  losing  that  treasure,  how  it  tends  to  slip  away 
from  her,  and  she  makes  great  clumsy  efforts  to  save 
herself  and  it.  Hence  much  that  is  unnecessarily 
barbarous,  much  that  is  unjust  and  even  stupid  in  the 
regime  of  Russia.  Hence,  for  instance,  the  great  ritual 
murder  trial  at  Kief.  Nothing  could  have  been  more 
clumsy  and  impoHtic  than  this  trial,  and  from  a  Western 
point  of  view  nothing  more  unjust  than  its  intention. 
The  prosecution  was  an  act  of  hostility  against  the 
Jews  in  Russia,  an  attempt  to  hasten  the  exodus  of  the 
Jews  to  America,  and  to  put  in  a  worse  position  those 
who  remained  behind.  For  the  Russian  patriot  cannot 
tolerate  the  Jew  —  he  sees  in  him  the  whole  instinct  of 
materialism  and  Westernism  and  commercialism. 

The  Jews,  especially  in  their  new  awakening,  are  a 
Western  nation.  They  find  their  natural  home  in 
America.  Zionism,  despite  the  sincerity  of  Jewish 
Zionists,  is  a  sentimentalism  with  many  Jews,  bluff 

154 


THE   FUTURE   OF  THE  JEWS  155 

with  others.  The  Jews  can  never  settle  in  great 
numbers  in  Palestine.  But  in  America  they  already 
tend  to  be  a  dominant  factor  in  the  population  of  that 
country.  Our  British  blood-relationship  with  the 
Americans,  it  may  be  said  in  passing,  is  something 
decidedly  on  the  wane.  The  Jews  to-day  are  on  the 
up-grade.  They  are  not  being  persecuted  so  much  as 
of  yore;  indeed,  on  the  contrary,  as  employers  of 
labour  they  begin  themselves  to  persecute  others.  Be 
that  as  it  may,  they  are  avaiUng  themselves  of  all  the 
opportunities  of  civilisation,  and  going  forward  to  be 
masters.  They  are  not  so  earnest  in  their  rehgious 
rites,  not  so  exclusive  of  the  Gentile,  incHned  to  marry 
into  Christian  families  —  even  in  Russia  they  are 
accepting  baptism  in  considerable  numbers.  All  good 
Russians  must  wish  the  Jews  Godspeed  when  they  see 
them  embarking  for  America  at  Libau,  not  because  they 
are  an  evil  people  or  accursed,  but  because  with  their 
genius  and  their  assumed  humiUty  they  have  ever  been 
a  great  danger  to  the  Russians.  It  is  a  truism  to  say 
that  if  the  revolution  succeeded,  or  if  freedom  were 
granted  to  all  the  peoples,  the  Jews  would  overrun 
Russia,  and  all  the  secular  power  would  fall  into  their 
hands. 

As  Christians  denying  the  world  it  is  difficult  to  see 
on  what  ground  Russians  trouble  themselves  so  much 
about  worldly  conditions.  They  are  positively  afraid 
of  the  Jews. 


156  RUSSIA  AND   THE  WORLD 

One  said  to  me :  "How  your  country  is  falling  into 
the  hands  of  the  Jews:  your  Lord  Chief  Justice  is  a 
Jew." 

"Isn't  it  splendid,"  said  I,  "the  head  of  the  Law  is 
a  Jew.  Now,  if  a  Jew  had  been  appointed  Archbishop 
of  Canterbury  we  might  have  had  cause  to  complain." 

What  has  a  true  Christian  got  to  do  with  law  ?  When 
he  goes  to  law,  he  ceases  for  the  time  being  to  be  a 
Christian  from  the  Eastern  or  Byzantine  point  of  view. 
Now,  the  Jews  understand  law  and  the  judgment  by 
a  code,  and  law  is  one  of  the  professions  best  suited  to 
their  temperament.  The  Jews  are  good  lawyers,  good 
bankers,  brokers,  commercial  travellers,  shipping 
agents,  chess-players,  mathematicians,  and  also  good 
musicians.  The  weak  spot  in  their  materialistic 
armour  is  music.  Through  music  they  find  access 
sometimes  to  the  things  of  the  spirit.  We  should  not 
feel  their  success  at  law  —  like  goes  to  like. 

"A  scandal,  however,"  said  my  friend.  "What 
justice  can  there  be  between  Jews  and  Christians? 
Their  Talmud  tells  them  that  any  means  against  the 
Christian  are  justifiable"  —  and  so  on,  the  whole 
anti-Semitic  diatribe  now  stale  by  repetition. 

But  to  revert  to  the  case  of  the  ritual  murder  trial. 
A  Christian  boy  had  been  found  done  to  death  in  a 
horrible  fashion,  his  veins  cut  in  a  special  way  with 
knives,  forty  wounds  in  his  body  —  the  position  of  the 
wounds  having  evidently  some  sort  of  mystic  signifi- 


THE   FUTURE   OF  THE  JEWS  157 

cance.  Beiliss  was  innocent ;  but  someone  was  guilty, 
a  madman  or  a  Jew,  and  indeed  the  probability  is 
that  a  Jew  did  actually  commit  the  crime.  Whether 
it  was  for  ritual  purposes  or  not  is  another  matter. 

Most  people  would  agree  that  it  was  a  great  mistake 
on  the  part  of  the  Russian  Government  to  fight  the 
Jews  on  the  count  of  the  murder  of  a  Christian  child. 
If  among  the  illiterate  and  savage  Jews  that  dwell  in 
the  remoter  parts  of  the  Pale  there  should  exist  dark 
sects  in  whose  rites  child-sacrifice,  Moloch  worship, 
and  the  like,  are  practised  —  it  is  merely  a  curiosity 
among  religions  of  contemporary  Europe.  But  the 
great  quarrel  of  Russians  with  Jews  is  not  on  that 
ground.  They  would  willingly  spare  the  Jews  an 
accidental  Christian  child  now  and  then.  No,  it  is 
with  the  Jewish  business  spirit  and  Jewish  enmity 
towards  Christianity  and  towards  the  "unprofitable" 
Christian  life,  that  the  Russian  has  his  quarrel. 

The  main  result  of  the  trial  was  that  it  brought  the 
question  of  anti-Semitism  to  the  touchstone  of  common 
sense.  Up  till  now  Jews  have  been  hated  or  protected 
emotionally,  but  throughout  the  world  there  has 
naturally  set  in  an  intellectual  inquiry  into  the  merits 
or  demerits  of  the  anti-Semitic  case.  The  most 
significant  thing  about  the  Beiliss  trial  was  that  the 
Jewish  people  had  the  power  to  obtain  from  a  court 
set  on  injustice  the  verdict  of  "Not  Guilty."  It 
proved  that  for  the  time  being  the  argument  of  physical 


158  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

force  was  not  available  against  the  Jews.  It  turned 
the  question  into  the  channels  of  the  Press,  the  pam- 
phlet, the  ordinary  conversation.  Henceforth  there  was 
much  less  chance  of  pogroms. 

Russia  has  to  decide  why  she  hates  the  Jews.  Obvi- 
ously she  does  not  hate  them  because  they  occasionally 
murder  a  Christian  child  —  that  is  an  absurdly  Western 
reason,  even  if  the  fact  were  true  —  that  is  only  the 
red  flag  of  the  massacre,  the  pretext,  the  inevitable  lie 
in  whose  name  murder  is  committed.  There  is  some- 
thing much  deeper  in  this  great  national  animosity, 
something  which  logic  and  common  sense  cannot  get 
over. 

There  are  two  parties  in  Russia;  an  enormous  one 
that  distrusts  the  Jew  and  believes  evil  of  him,  a  small 
one  which  protects  him.  But  as  regards  "ritual 
murder"  it  is,  of  course,  a  comparatively  small  number 
that  believes  the  Jews  are  guilty  of  the  practice. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  phenomena  of  the  time 
has  been  the  persecution  of  the  brilliant  anti-Semitic 
pamphleteer  Rozanof,  one  of  the  contributors  of  the 
Novoe  Vremya,  and  a  writer  recognised  by  everyone  as 
being  in  the  foremost  rank  in  Russia.  His  primary 
feeling  about  the  Jews  may  be  summarised  from  a  book 
of  his  confessions.  Fallen  Leaves. 

"The  Jew  always  begins  with  service  and  serviceableness 
and  ends  with  power  and  mastership.  In  the  first  stage  he  is 
difiicult  to  grapple  with.    What  are  you  to  do  with  a  man  who 


THE   FUTURE   OF   THE   JEWS  159 

simply  stands  and  puts  himself  at  your  service?  But  in  the 
second  stage  no  one  can  get  equal  with  him.  Countries  and 
nations  perish  — 

"The  services  of  the  Jews  are  like  nails  in  my  hands,  the 
*  caressingness '  of  the  Jews  burns  me  like  a  flame.  For  profiting 
by  the  one  my  nation  perishes,  and  blown  upon  by  the  other  my 
nation  rots  and  dies.  We  are  all  running  to  the  Jews  for  help. 
And  in  a  hundred  years  all  will  be  with  the  JewsJ" 

This  was  written  long  before  the  Beiliss  case.  During 
the  trial  Rozanof  came  forward  and  contributed  to 
the  Novoe  Vremya  and  other  papers  a  most  substantial 
account  of  the  ritual  practices  of  the  Jews.  Credit 
must  be  given  him  for  extraordinary  research.  He  had 
gone  into  the  depths  of  black  magic  as  propounded  in 
almost  inaccessible  volumes  on  occultism,  and  had 
come  back  with  a  circumstantial  case  against  secret 
sects  of  the  Jews.  He  explained  the  hieroglyphics  of 
the  wounds  of  Yushinsky.  He  insisted  that  the  great 
agitation  made  by  the  Jews  was  due  to  their  fear  that 
their  secrets  were  about  to  be  unveiled,  and  bringing  a 
wide  culture  and  incisive  journalistic  wit  to  bear  on 
the  subjects  he  certainly  convinced  many  who  wished 
to  be  convinced,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  set  a  most 
influential  band  of  Russian  writers  and  thinkers  against 
him. 

Merezhkovsky  and  Struve  and  several  other  members 
of  the  Religious  and  Philosophical  Society  of  St.  Peters- 
burg, one  of  the  most  important  literary  societies  in 


i6o  RUSSIA   AND   THE  WORLD 

Russia,  protested  against  the  membership  of  Rozanof, 
making  a  motion  to  expel  him,  enforcing  the  motion  by 
threatening  to  withdraw  themselves  if  he  were  still 
allowed  to  be  a  member.  They  could  not  continue 
to  work  with  a  man  who  held  such  opinions.  The 
motion  was  defeated,  but  Rozanof  on  his  own  account 
resigned.  Jew-lovers  are  also  ready  to  persecute ;  pro- 
Semitism  has  its  victims,  as  well  as  anti-Semitism. 
Rozanof  has  lately  collected  his  articles  into  a  book, 
"The  Relation  of  the  Jews  to  Blood,"  and  several 
Liberal  newspapers  have  refused  advertisements  of  it. 
It  is  a  very  powerful,  interesting,  and  curious  volume. 
It  is  rather  difficult  for  a  Russian  to  read  it  without 
being  shaken.  But  then  the  practice  of  drinking  blood 
and  the  existence  of  secret  rites  is  a  commonplace  to 
the  Russian,  and  his  mind  is  prepared  for  a  serious 
consideration  of  ideas  which  in  the  West  have  no 
countenance.  The  Jews  have  never  been  found  sac- 
rificing Christian  children  in  England  or  America,  and 
that  necessarily  binds  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  in  the 
behef  that  ritual  murder  is  a  myth. 

The  question  remains:  Why  are  the  Russians  so 
antagonistic  to  the  Jews  ?  All  Russians  know  a  Jew  at 
once  by  his  face  and  his  manners,  so  intense  is  the  dis- 
like of  the  type.  There  is  something  more  in  it  than 
the  arguments  of  this  curious  cause  celebre.  1  think  it 
is  due  to  the  fundamental  opposition  of  the  Jewish 
character  to  that  which  is  most  precious  in  the  Slav. 


THE   FUTURE   OF   THE   JEWS  i6i 

The  Tartar  in  the  Russian  is  a  similar  type  to  the  Jew  — 
and  indeed  many  hold  that  the  Russian  Jews  are  not 
Hebraic,  but  simply  the  descendants  of  Tartar  converts 
to  Judaism.  The  Tartar  gets  on  happily  with  the  Jew, 
but  the  fundamentally  Slavonic,  the  mystical,  the  care- 
less, that  part  of  the  soul  of  the  Russians  which  makes 
them  Hke  the  Celts  in  temperament,  cannot  agree  with 
the  Jew.  To  him  the  Jew  is  poison.  Russia  considers 
its  Tartar  nature  the  lower  nature.  All  love  of  Russia 
and  pride  in  Russia  is  love  of  the  other  and  pride  in 
the  other.  All  that  is  precious  in  Russian  life,  art, 
literature,  music,  religion,  springs  from  the  other  —  the 
gay  carelessness,  the  despising  of  material  possessions, 
the  love  of  the  neighbour,  the  mystical. 

The  Jews,  with  their  grasp  of  trade,  their  sympathy 
with  Westernism  and  contempt  of  Easternism,  en- 
danger the  Russian  ideal.  They  have  an  immense 
power  in  the  Press ;  the  Russian  Government  there- 
fore keeps  a  strict  censorship  over  the  Press,  flinging 
editors  into  prison  right  and  left,  confiscating  numbers 
of  journals,  inflicting  huge  fines.  The  Jews  are  strongly 
entrenched  in  the  legal  profession,  and  are  credited 
with  making  immense  fortunes  by  dubious  means  — 
and  Russians  revenge  themselves  weakly  by  exacting 
heavy  blackmail  when  they  can.  The  Jews  in  the 
secret  poHce  bought  and  sold  the  revolution ;  witness 
the  cases  of  Azef  and  Bogrof.  The  Jews  are  the  main 
manipulators  of  emigration  to  America  and  elsewhere. 


1 62  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

having  a  regular  business  of  procuring  passengers  for 
the  transatlantic  shipping  companies,  conducting  the 
passportless  across  the  Russian  frontier,  obtaining 
premiums  from  South  American  trust  companies  for 
providing  gangs  of  workers.  They  are  too  clever  for 
the  Russians,  or  Russians  are  too  easily  corrupted. 
The  consequence  is  that  no  broad  legal  measure  is 
ever  carried  out  in  such  a  way  as  to  stop  the  practices. 
The  result  of  this  Russian  impotency  is  irritation  and 
petulancy  on  the  part  of  the  clean-handed,  and  inflamed 
maHce  on  the  part  of  the  bribe-takers.  Because  of 
this  which  cannot  be  tracked  down  and  settled  between 
the  Jew  and  the  Russian,  the  latter  has  recourse  to 
wanton  massacre,  to  trial  for  ritual  murder  and  the 
like.  The  proscription  of  Rozanof  marked  an  inter- 
esting development  in  this  hostihty.  Liberal  Russia 
will  perhaps  make  up  her  mind  to  protect  the  Hebrews, 
and  the  Duma  of  the  future  will  perhaps  free  them  and 
put  in  their  hands  what  is  their  due  —  business  and  the 
law.  But  how  will  the  Church  and  the  aristocracy 
and  the  poor  religious  mystical  peasant  put  a  bridle 
on  the  power  that  money  and  the  law  would  eventually 
give  the  Jew  in  idle  Russia? 

The  war  raises  the  question  of  the  rights  of  Jewry 
in  another  form  It  has  come  about  that  the  Russian 
and  British  Governments  are  in  alliance.  The  Jews 
have  been  working  against  the  possibility  of  such  an 
aUiance    for    many    years.    They  have    used    every 


THE   FUTURE   OF  THE   JEWS  163 

opportunity  to  cultivate  the  British  and  American 
peoples  in  the  abhorrence  of  Russian  Government. 
But  behold,  thanks  to  Germany's  hate  of  England  and 
the  maturing  of  that  hate  to  war  —  we  are  all  friendly 
towards  Russia.  The  campaign  of  the  Jews  and  those 
whom  they  had  converted  to  hatred  of  Russia  is  badly 
left.  If  it  could  have  been  possible  for  England  to 
remain  neutral  in  this  conflict,  there  would  undoubtedly 
have  been  a  great  campaign  of  defamation  of  Russia. 

England,  however,  has  great  sympathy  with  the 
Jews.  If  the  Russian  authorities  allow  massacres,  or 
if  such  mistaken  prosecutions  are  insisted  on  as  that 
of  Beiliss,  England  will  be  cold  towards  Russia  and 
Russia  will  feel  her  coldness.  Russia  should  know 
this. 

The  great  question  is :  Is  Russia  going  to  do  any- 
thing for  the  Jews  when  the  war  is  over  ?  Many  think 
that  Russia  has  promised  emancipation,  but,  of  course, 
she  has  not.  The  Jews  are  conducting  a  ver}^  effective 
propaganda  in  the  Press,  watching,  criticising,  correcting 
all  the  statements  made  about  the  Jews  by  journahsts 
and  authors.  Unfortunately,  of  those  who  write  about 
Russia  very  few  have  any  clear  idea  either  of  Russia 
herself  or  of  the  Jewish  Pale;  they  either  depict 
unrelieved  horror,  or  they  talk  of  their  personal  dislike 
of  the  Jewish  type,  Jewish  ways,  Jewish  clothes,  and 
so  on.  Consequently,  the  correcting  of  joumaKsm  is 
a  very  useful  way  of  propagandising. 


i64  RUSSIA  AND    THE   WORLD 

The  Jewish  difficulty  is  that  the  Poles  have  been 
promised  something  as  Poles,  but  the  Jews  have  been 
promised  nothing.  The  Belgians,  the  French  and  the 
British  promise  themselves  certain  rewards  on  the  day 
of  victory,  but  the  Jews  as  Jews  have  been  promised 
nothing  at  all,  and  cannot  promise  themselves  any- 
thing. Jewry  has  made  up  its  mind  that  though  it 
has  not  been  promised  anything,  it  intends  to  get 
something  out  of  it  all. 

With  that  end  in  view  the  Jews  lay  emphasis  on  the 
loyalty  of  Jews  and  on  the  exploits  of  Jewish  soldiers. 
They  are  entitled  to  do  so.  There  are  thousands  of 
Jews  fighting  in  the  Enghsh,  French  and  Belgian 
armies,  not,  of  course,  as  Jews  but  as  British,  French 
or  Belgian  subjects  respectively.  There  are  tens  of 
thousands  serving  in  the  Russian  army.  There  they 
are  serving  as  Jews  rather  than  as  Russians  —  for  a 
Jew  is  denied  many  privileges  of  Russian  nationality. 
But  of  course  the  Jew  is  compelled  to  serve  —  he  has 
no  say  in  the  matter. 

An  Enghsh  correspondent  writes  to  me  that  we  must 
remember  that  the  Russian  Jews  could  have  remained 
neutral  if  they  had  chosen.  This  shows  the  sort  of 
notion  that  gets  abroad  through  partisan  propaganda. 
The  Jews  had  no  choice  in  the  matter.  They  might 
have  rebelled  and  so  been  shot  down  under  martial 
law  —  in  that  sense  only  had  they  a  choice. 

The  pro- Jewish  propaganda  insists  on  the  heroism 


THE   FUTURE   OF   THE  JEWS  165 

of  Osnas,  whom  the  Tsar  decorated,  and  on  the  valorous 
deeds  of  the  Jews  serving  in  the  Russian  army.  They 
point  to  the  suffering  and  death  of  many  Jewish  soldiers, 
and  also  to  the  privations  of  Jewish  families  in  the  dis- 
tricts ravaged  by  the  Germans,  and  they  say  :  Does  all 
this  go  for  naught?  Every  true  EngHshman's  answer 
is,  It  ought  not  to  go  for  naught;  the  Jews  should 
be  shown  exceptional  kindness  when  the  war  is  over. 

But  there  is  another  side  of  the  argument  which  is 
not  indicated  in  the  propaganda.  It  is  that  there  are 
also  thousands  of  German  Jews  fighting  in  the  German 
army,  and  fighting  as  well,  suffering  as  much.  There 
is  also  a  great  number  of  Jews  in  England  and  America 
who  in  season  and  out  of  season  pursue  a  propaganda 
against  Russia,  chilling  the  friendly  spirit  which  at  pres- 
ent exists  between  Russia  and  the  other  alHes.  The 
Russians  have  been  staunch  and  loyal  friends  of  the 
English  and  French,  and  have  withstood  all  manner  of 
seductive  proposals  made  to  them  by  the  Germans 
with  the  object  of  detaching  them.  The  Jews  cannot 
at  present  claim  that  they  are  helping  our  cause  very 
much.  Still,  that  is  no  reason  why  the  Jews  should  be 
done  injustice  or  rendered  liable  to  further  persecution 
in  Poland.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  within  the  Jewish 
Pale  they  will  be  granted  certain  privileges  of  education 
and  emigration,  and  that  they  be  better  safeguarded 
from  the  individual  malice  of  Jew-baiters. 

The  question  of  what  Russia  is  going  to  do  for  the 


i66  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

Jews  was  put  to  me  lately  by  one  of  our  most  distin- 
guished British  Jews,  the  Lord  Chief  Justice.  I  give 
the  conversation.  Imagine  the  glittering,  clear-cut 
features  of  one  who  has  been  eminent  in  law,  politics, 
and  finance.  I  find  myseK  sitting  next  to  him  one 
night,  at  dinner. 

We  talked  of  the  prospects  of  Poland's  autonomy, 
and  then  at  last  .  .  .  "There  is  one  question  I  should 
like  to  ask  you  specially,"  said  my  neighbour,  ''that 
is,  what  do  you  think  is  likely  to  be  the  position  of  the 
Jews  at  the  end  of  the  war?  Do  you  think  anything 
will  be  done  for  them?" 

"Not  very  much,"  I  answered.  "They  will  not 
obtain  freedom  to  go  where  they  wish  in  the  Russian 
Empire.  The  Russian  Church  without  wavering  is 
against  the  Jews,  and,  as  you  know,  the  Court  itself 
not  only  has  no  tolerance  for  the  Jews,  but  is  ready  to 
believe  anything  against  them,  anything  like  the  ritual 
murder,  for  instance.  One  thing  I  gather :  they  are 
likely  to  be  excused  military  service." 

"As  a  privilege?"  he  asked. 

"Yes,  of  course  as  a  privilege,  not  as  a  new  depri- 
vation. The  Jews  are  strongly  against  mihtary 
service." 

Then  the  conversation  dropped  for  a  few  minutes,  to 
be  taken  up  later. 

I  turned  to  my  neighbour  and  asked : 

"Is  the  Government  hkely  to  ask  for  special  clauses 


THE   FUTURE   OF   THE   JEWS  167 

in  the  treaty  of  peace  safeguarding  Russia's  treatment 
of  the  Jews?" 

"We  shall  not  have  to  conclude  peace  with  Russia, 
who  is  our  ally,  but  with  Germany,"  was  the  answer. 

"But  the  Jews  are  making  a  great  deal  of  propaganda 
just  now.  They  are  showing  a  great  deal  of  distrust  of 
Russia,  and  they  evidently  intend  raising  the  question 
in  a  very  formidable  fashion  when  once  peace  is  in 
sight." 

"I  think  perhaps  America  may  put  forward  some 
proposition." 

"  What  do  you  think  can  be  done  ?  "  I  asked.  "  The 
Jews  cannot  reahse  themselves  as  a  nation  in  Christian 
Russia,  they  don't  seem  very  much  pleased  with  what  I 
wrote  in  The  Times  about  their  realising  themselves  as  a 
nation  in  America.  Have  you  any  personal  belief  in 
Zionism  ?  " 

He  did  not  seem  to  think  it  likely  that  the  Children 
would  return  to  Palestine. 

Nevertheless,  the  air  just  now  is  full  of  prophecy  about 
the  return  of  the  Jews.  The  Jews  themselves  are 
whispering  much  about  the  fulfilment  of  the  old  proph- 
ecies, and  though  it  is  not  likely  that  the  Rothschilds 
and  the  great  financiers  will  go  to  Jerusalem,  I  believe 
there  may  be  something  in  the  possibility  of  the  re- 
establishment  of  the  Jews  in  Palestine  as  a  nation. 

One  of  the  possibilities  of  the  war  is  the  fall  of  the 
Turkish  Empire  and  the  liberation  of  Syria  from  the 


i68  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

Mohammedan  yoke.  Palestine  becomes  vacant,  or  at 
least  eligible  for  a  new  Government.  It  seems  to  me 
that  something  might  be  done  for  the  establishment  of 
the  Jews  in  Palestine. 

The  Jews  won't  go  there  aU  at  once.  That  is  evident. 
But  a  Jewish  Government  might  be  formed  there  of 
financiers  and  representative  Jews.  Once  a  Govern- 
ment has  been  formed,  it  could  be  made  optional  for 
the  Jews  to  give  up  their  various  European  national 
papers  and  become  Jewish  subjects.  Russian  Jews 
could  then  cease  to  be  Russian  subjects  and  become 
Jewish  subjects;  German  Jews  could  become  Jewish 
subjects,  and  so  on.  They  would  have  the  financial 
and  moral  protection  of  their  own  Government.  They 
could  in  time  form  a  democracy  in  Palestine  if  they 
wished  it ;  they  could  have  their  own  army  and  navy 
if  necessary. 

This  would  be  a  great  blessing  to  the  world.  Already 
the  chief  reason  that  the  Russian  peasant  has  for  calling 
the  Jew  accursed  is  that  he  has  no  land  of  his  own.  For 
instance,  when  the  Russians  were  retreating  in  Poland 
I  asked  a  common  soldier  the  reason.  His  answer  was 
—  "  The  Jews  betray  us.  That's  what  comes  of  having 
an  accursed  people  without  any  land  of  their  own;  they 
dog  our  steps  and  sell  us  at  every  turn.  If  we  are 
winning  they  come  round  us  and  praise  us  and  try  to 
help  us ;  if  we  begin  to  lose  they  run  to  the  enemy  and 
say,  '  Don't  you  ill-treat  us ;  we  are  your  friends :  we 


THE   FUTURE   OF   THE   JEW  169 

can  help  you;  we  have  valuable  information.'"  The 
Jews  ought  to  have  a  place  of  their  own  and  a  Govern- 
ment of  their  own.  They  ought  not  to  be  always 
fighting  for  their  separate  interests  in  the  life  of  foreign 
nations.  They  are  a  great  people,  and  are  now,  as 
never  before,  on  the  up-grade  in  civiHsation.  They 
ought  to  be  officially  united.  The  world  of  Gentiles 
also  is  interested  to  see  them  as  a  nation,  and  would 
welcome  any  steps  the  Jews  would  take  towards  the 
realisation  of  themselves  as  such. 

The  brevities  of  the  Jewish  situation  may  be  stated 
thus: 

(i)  Russia  has  promised  little  to  the  Jews   and 
will  give  Httle. 

(ii)  England  has  sympathy  with  the  Jews, 
(iii)  America  will  help  the  Jews  if  she  can. 
(iv)  The  Jews  are  working  hard  for  themselves, 
(v)  I  suggest  that  if  the  Turkish  Empire  falls  a 
Jewish  Government  should  be  established  in  Pales- 
tine, and  Jews  all  the  world  over  should  have  the 
option  of  becoming  Jewish  subjects. 


V 

Turks 

The  covet ousness  of  Turkey  has  overcome  fear  of 
consequences,  and  her  perennial  enmity  has  matured 
once  more  to  war.  Behold,  in  addition  to  the  wild 
strife  of  Europe,  another  Turkish  war.  Belgium  has 
been  overrun  and  ruined,  Poland  has  been  overrun,  and 
the  Caucasus  and  Crimea  are  to  have  equal  ruin  with 
these  unfortunate  countries  —  massacre,  devastation, 
robbery.  Not  only  the  Caucasus  and  Crimea,  but  also 
S3n-ia  and  Palestine,  where  are  large  colonies  of  Russians 
and  English,  and  many  French  and  Belgians  with  com- 
mercial interests.  The  wealth  of  Beirut,  Smyrna  and 
Jaffa  is  to  a  great  extent  European  wealth.  The 
powerful  Russian  settlement  in  Jerusalem  is  in  danger, 
and  also  the  lives  of  the  gentle  and  cultured  British 
who  are  attached  to  the  English  mission. 

The  war  is  a  continuous  calamity  for  non-combatants 
—  a  campaign  of  organised  plunder  and  loot.  It  will 
hardly  be  Turkey's  policy  to  fight  pitched  battles,  and 
so  be  beaten  in  the  field.  She  will  rather  avoid  the 
Russian  troops,  seek  out  unprotected  districts,  and  make 
inroads.     The  great  Russian  army  mobilised  in  Trans- 

170 


TURKS  171 

Caucasia  is  bound  to  have  victories  but  they  will  not 
cause  much  anxiety  to  the  Turks ;  the  natural  difficul- 
ties in  the  way  of  conquering  Asia  Minor  are  almost 
insuperable.  A  small  force  of  irregulars  and  Turkish 
brigands  could  keep  a  great  army  employed  for  a  long 
time.  The  native  Turkish  population  is  very  hostile 
and  warhke,  and  there  is  the  prospect  of  protracted 
guerilla  warfare.  I  do  not  see  Russia  getting  to  Con- 
stantinople by  way  of  these  mountains  and  deserts. 
It's  a  long,  long  way.  The  first  phase  of  the  Russian- 
Turkish  conflict  depends  on  the  success  or  failure  of 
the  Black  Sea  Fleet.  If  the  Turks  and  Germans  sink 
the  Russian  warships,  such  as  they  are,  they  can  choose 
what  points  they  like  on  the  long  line  of  seashore,  and 
bring  up  their  barbarous  troops  and  make  inroads  and 
pillage.  Many  such  inroads  have  already  been  made  — 
to  judge  from  private  correspondence  I  have  seen  — 
but  the  Russian  Censor  suppresses  all  details.  But  if 
the  Russian  fleet  disposes  of  the  Turkish  and  German 
warships,  Russia  can  land  troops  much  nearer  to 
Constantinople  and  the  heart  of  Turkey.  Unfortu- 
nately, owing  to  the  security  of  the  Bosphorus,  the 
Turks  have  a  retiring  place  as  good  as  the  Kiel  Canal 
in  the  other  theatre  of  war.  If  the  Turkish  fleet  is 
cautious  it  can  prolong  the  struggle  indefinitely. 

Should  the  Turks  obtain  ascendancy  in  the  Black 
Sea,  the  chief  towns  to  suffer  would  be  Odessa,  Batum, 
Novorossisk,    Poti,    and    Theodosia.     The    town    of 


172  RUSSIA   AND   THE  WORLD 

Sebastopol  is  probably  impregnable;  Kherson  and 
Nikolaieff  are  somewhat  difficult  of  access.  The  ports 
of  the  Azof  Sea,  the  most  important  of  which  is  Rostof- 
on-the-Don,  have  been  saved  by  the  shallowness  of 
the  sea  and  the  early  date  of  freezing.  Rostof  is  the 
railway  key  of  the  Caucasus  and  a  wealthy  and  im- 
portant place. 

All  has  changed  since  the  days  of  the  Crimean  War. 
The  Black  Sea  offers  many  targets,  and  Russia  is 
much  more  vulnerable  here.  I  have  walked  almost  the 
whole  of  the  Black  Sea  shore,  from  Sebastopol  to  Batum, 
a  thousand  miles  and  more,  and  so  know  it  with  unusual 
intimacy.  It  is  poor  country,  but  there  are  many  prizes 
for  pirates.  There  is  a  whole  chain  of  watering-places ; 
there  is  the  Tsar's  favourite  estate  of  Livadia,  where 
the  happiest  hours  of  the  Tsarevitch  have  been  spent ; 
there  is  Yalta,  the  favourite  winter  haunt  of  the  aristoc- 
racy; there  is  the  great  monastery  of  New  Athos, 
destroyed  by  the  Turks  in  1870,  but  built  again  over 
the  ruins  of  the  old  building,  and  now  one  of  the  great- 
est institutions  of  its  kind;  there  is  wonderful  little 
Gagri,  with  its  rich  villas,  all  ready  to  the  hand  of  the 
spoiler,  like  bunches  of  wild  grapes.  There  are  no 
fortifications,  no  soldiers.  Already  even  the  inhabi- 
tants of  the  seashore  villages  have  fled;  the  Turkish 
knife  is  known  and  feared. 

But  it  is  not  only  the  Turks  who  are  feared,  but 
the  Mohammedan  tribesmen  of  the  Caucasus,  very 


TURKS  173 

dangerous  people  even  in  time  of  peace ;  the  Abkhastsi, 
the  Mohammedan  Ossetini,  the  Ingooshi,  and  a  score 
more  races,  all  armed  and  prone  to  murder  and  brigand- 
age. The  whole  coast  from  Gagri  to  beyond  Batum  is 
necessarily  sympathetic  to  the  enemy.  And  in  the 
interior  of  the  Caucasus  and  in  Transcaucasia  there 
are  bound  to  be  risings.  Russia  will  either  have  to 
allow  her  territory  to  fall  under  terrible  ravage,  or  send 
a  great  quantity  of  troops  to  guard  the  various  vital 
points  of  the  shore.  Tuapse,  for  instance,  the  oil  port 
of  Maikop,  is  now  an  important  point,  since  the  railway 
runs  thither  from  Arma\ir  through  somewhat  dis- 
affected country.  At  Batum,  Theodosia,  Novorossisk, 
Sebastopol,  and  Odessa,  distinct  railway  hnes  from 
Russia  terminate;  these  are  most  important.  There 
is  as  yet  no  coast  railway. 

But  we  wait  for  the  success  of  the  Russian  Black  Sea 
Fleet.  The  best  vessels  are  the  Johann  Zlato-Ust  and 
the  Efstafiy,  both  built  in  1906,  and  having  a  displace- 
ment of  13,000  tons.  Then  follows  the  Pantalemon, 
built  1900,  and  the  Rostislaf,  built  1896,  and  after  these 
a  tail  of  old  and  little  vessels.  Against  this  force  sails 
the  even  more  miserable  Turkish  Fleet,  whose  best 
vessels  are  the  Barharossa  Haireden  and  the  Forgiid 
Reis,  both  built  in  Germany  in  1891,  and  displacing 
10,060  tons.  But  Turkey  has  also  the  German  light 
cruiser  Breslau  and  the  great,  powerful  modern  Dread- 
nought Goeben,  of  23,000  tonnage  and  2S  knots  speed. 


174  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

If  the  modern  warship  is  as  superior  in  power  as  experts 
hold,  then  the  Goeben  should  itself  be  able  to  sink  the 
whole  Russian  Black  Sea  Fleet.  The  calamities  of 
that  vessel,  however,  lead  one  to  hope  that  it  has 
considerable  defects  or  is  inefficiently  manned.  Twice 
it  has  been  forced  back  to  Constantinople  for  repairs. 
It  is  now  at  large,  and  it  recently  shelled  Batum.  But 
it  is  steaming  at  a  greatly  reduced  speed,  owing  to 
bad  Turkish  coal.  It  seems  very  possible  that  the  bad 
luck  that  has  attended  its  adventures  in  the  Black  Sea 
will  continue,  and  that  once  more  it  will  be  disabled, 
and  this  time  finally. 

Many  have  asked,  Why  did  not  Russia  declare  war 
on  Turkey  and  fall  upon  her  in  the  midst  of  her  prep- 
arations? But  Russia,  having  her  hands  full  with 
Austria  and  Germany,  would  rather  not  solve  the  prob- 
lem of  Turkey  at  present,  much  as  she  would  like  a 
crusade  against  the  Saracen  under  ordinary  conditions. 
The  presence  of  two  modern  German  warships  in  the 
Turkish  fleet  greatly  increases  the  difficulty.  Russia, 
thanks  to  her  treaty  obhgations  with  Turkey,  has 
never  been  able  to  bring  any  warships  through  the 
Dardanelles  and  the  Bosphorus  into  the  Black  Sea, 
otherwise  she  would  not  be  to-day  in  the  position  of  a 
third-rate  naval  Power  there.  Probably  the  Goeben  is 
the  first  great  modern  warship  that  has  yet  dipped  into 
the  waters  of  the  Euxine.  Turkey  has  not  even  per- 
mitted guns  to  be  taken  through  the  Straits,  and  every 


TURKS  175 

vessel  passing  from  Russia  to  the  iEgean  or  back 
again  has  had  to  submit  to  being  searched  at  the  north- 
ern or  southern  entrances  to  the  narrow  waters.  As 
long  as  the  Goehen  and  the  Breslau  are  on  the  sea,  the 
Russians  are  obHged  to  keep  great  numbers  of  soldiers 
waiting  at  the  points  of  possible  invasion.  It  is  worth 
Germany's  while  to  keep  Turkey  fighting.  Turkey's 
quarrel  is  worth  200,000  Russians  less  on  the  fields  of 
Poland. 

One  of  the  surprises  of  the  war  has  been  that  Turkey 
has  been  ready  to  squander  our  friendship.  The  Turks, 
as  a  people,  have  a  great  deal  of  respect  and  admiration 
for  the  British  people.  They  regard  us  as  their  tradi- 
tional friends.  They  are  proud  of  the  bits  of  English 
they  know,  and  the  sailors  and  dock  labourers  of 
Constantinople  and  Smyrna  have  even  adopted  some 
EngHsh  into  their  speech,  and  you  may  frequently  hear 
such  expressions  as  "All  right"  and  "  Go-ahead"  if  you 
listen  in  the  harbours.  And  the  Enghsh  have  an 
esteem  for  the  Turks.  Many  of  our  dear  Pagan  fellow- 
countrymen  down  in  the  City  have  a  soft  spot  in  their 
hearts  for  the  Turk.  This  was  abundantly  apparent  at 
the  time  of  the  first  Balkan  War,  when  London  was  at 
the  outset  almost  entirely  in  sympathy  with  Turkey. 
Of  course,  the  Turks  are  very  picturesque,  rather  simple 
in  their  national  ways,  and  they  observe  the  rites  of 
their  rehgion  in  good  taste.  They  have  the  manners  of 
gentlemen  —  some  of  them.    But  then  there  is  every- 


176  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

thing  in  the  Turkish  Empire  —  Caucasian  brigands, 
Asiatic  Bazouks,  Dervishes,  Arabs.  One  rather  won- 
ders how  Pierre  Loti,  with  his  great  sentimental  attach- 
ment to  Turkey,  views  the  present  conflict.  How  will 
he  view  the  split  up  of  the  Empire  and  the  Christianis- 
ing of  so  many  parts  of  it? 

If  Russia  beats  Turkey  thoroughly  there  should  be 
little  trouble  in  pacifying  the  Holy  Land ;  if  she  takes 
Constantinople  the  Turkish  Empire  will  be  likely  to  fall 
to  bits.  That  will  be  some  consolation  for  the  extra 
trouble  to  which  the  Allies  have  been  put.  Russia  will 
hold  a  protectorate  over  Armenia,  Constantinople  and 
the  access  to  the  Mediterranean.  Syria  and  Palestine 
may  receive  some  measure  of  independence. 

The  Turkish  hold  on  Syria  is  very  light.  Only 
about  one-fifth  of  the  population  is  Mohammedan ;  the 
remaining  four-fifths  is  quite  out  of  sympathy  with 
Turkish  rule,  and  would  much  rather  govern  itself  or 
entrust  its  destinies  to  the  French  or  English. 

What  will  become  of  Palestine  is  rather  an  interesting 
problem.  We  hear  little  of  home  Syrian  politics,  and 
yet  there  is  a  strong  national  sentiment  among  Syrians 
the  world  over.  If  Syria  were  re-established  as  a 
State,  a  great  number  of  rich  Syrians  would  return  to 
their  native  land  —  especially  from  America.  The 
Syrians  are  mostly  Christians,  though  they  are  Eastern 
in  habits  and  keep  their  wives  and  domestic  life  much 
veiled. 


TURKS  177 

Stronger  claimants  to  rights  in  Palestine  are  the  Jews. 
Ancient  prophecy,  the  approval  of  the  Gentile  world 
and  contemporary  Jewish  sentiment  are  all  in  favour 
of  the  re-establishment  of  the  Jews  in  Syria.  Zionism 
promises  to  settle  the  problem  of  the  treatment  of  the 
Jews  in  the  various  countries  of  the  world.  If  the 
peace  that  follows  this  war  is  founded  on  the  principle 
that  each  nationality  is  entitled  to  govern  itself  on  its 
own  representative  land,  then  it  will  be  a  case  of  Poland 
to  the  Poles,  Alsace  to  the  French,  Ireland  to  the 
Irish,  Jerusalem  to  the  Jews,  and  so  on. 

There  are,  however,  great  difficulties.  Jerusalem  is 
a  great  Christian  See.  The  Roman  Catholics,  the 
Orthodox  Greeks  and  the  Orthodox  Russians,  the 
Armenians,  the  Copts,  all  regard  Jerusalem  not  as  a 
place  made  holy  by  the  Old,  but  by  the  New  Testa- 
ment, not  by  Jewish  history,  but  by  the  holiest  events 
in  the  founding  of  Christianity.  Strange  to  say,  there 
is  not  half  the  ill-feeling  against  the  Turks  as  against 
the  Jews.  The  old  wall  where  the  Jews  beat  their 
heads  on  the  stones  and  wail  is  not  the  holiest  shrine 
in  Jerusalem,  but  rather  the  sepulchre  of  Jesus;  not 
the  promise  that  there  the  Jews  shall  be  gathered  to- 
gether again,  but  the  symbolic  fact  of  the  life  of  the 
first  great  Pilgrim.  Russian  peasants,  for  instance, 
would  be  very  averse  from  the  idea  of  Bethlehem  and 
Calvary  belonging  to  the  Jews. 

Still,  I  suppose  whatever  happens,  the  pilgrimaging 


178  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

to  Jerusalem  will  be  resumed  by  the  Russian  peasants 
when  the  war  is  over  and  the  Straits  are  open  again. 
Whatever  happens,  the  same  sweet  pastoral  Hfe  of  Syrian 
shepherdesses  and  Bedouin  Arabs  with  their  tents  will 
still  go  on.  The  Syrians  are,  of  course,  Turkish  con- 
scripts, but  so  many  of  them  have  deserted  that  the 
nation  is  more  like  a  nation  of  non-combatants.  The 
Russians  have  been  arrested.  Many  monks  and  priests 
have  been  molested.  There  has  been  a  considerable 
amount  of  pillaging  of  Christian  shrines.  The  Greeks 
have  to  manage  everything,  but  they  are  looked  upon 
with  hostility.  There  are  continual  alarms  of  massacre 
and  outrage  and  many  insurrectionary  Arab  gatherings. 
The  Christian  solemnisation  of  the  baptism  at  Jordan 
and  of  Easter  at  Jerusalem  will  be  without  the  chorus 
of  pilgrim  praise  and  the  curious  gaze  of  the  tourist. 
The  first  Easter  after  the  war  should  be  a  wonderful 
time. 


VI 

Americans 

Feeling  in  America  is  now  more  pro-British  than  it 
was  at  the  beginning  of  the  war.  But  the  fact  that  it 
was  confessedly  anti-British  at  the  commencement  of 
the  war  should  make  the  Allies  very  wary  in  their 
judgment.  Anglo-American  sentiment  though  showy 
is  none  the  less  sincere.  We  can  accept  it  heartily. 
But  it  is  a  mistake  to  fix  our  eyes  on  it  to  the  exclusion 
of  other  things  in  America.  It  is  put  in  the  foreground 
by  American  and  British  journalists,  but  from  one 
point  of  view  that  is  a  mistake.  It  is  much  more  im- 
portant that  we  keep  our  eyes  on  the  hostihty  that  exists 
in  the  United  States,  and  that  we  gauge  its  power. 
A  number  of  Anglo-Americans  are  in  the  habit  of  think- 
ing and  talking  and  writing  slightingly  of  Britain; 
most  of  the  German  and  Dutch  Americans  sympathise 
with  the  Germans;  and  the  Jews,  of  whom  there  are 
1,000,000  in  New  York  alone,  are,  on  the  whole,  pro- 
German,  and  are  certainly  anti-Russian ;  the  Irish  are 
many  of  them  anti-British  also.  We  are  too  much  in 
the  habit  of  assuming  that  America  is  peopled  by 
British  people  who  merely  Kve  under  a  President  of 

179 


i8o  RUSSIA   AND    THE  WORLD 

their  own  instead  of  under  our  King.  We  forget  the 
flow  of  foreign  immigration  into  the  States,  we  forget 
the  trusts,  the  undue  influence  of  money,  the  corruption 
in  the  administration.  American  reahty  is  not  our 
reality.  American  ideals  are  not  our  ideals.  I  hope 
America  will  not  be  called  upon  to  interfere  in  the 
struggle,  either  as  a  belligerent  or  as  a  peace-maker. 
But  in  case  it  should  happen  that  America  comes  in, 
it  would  be  well  for  the  British  to  keep  a  true  picture  of 
America  and  American  ideals  before  them. 

First  of  all,  America  is  a  commercial  country.  Busi- 
ness is  her  chief  function.  She  has  no  landed  gentry, 
no  old  peasant  life  with  peasant  customs. 

America  believes  in  universal  peace.  She  sees  no 
reason  for  such  an  unprofitable  thing  as  war.  She,  for 
her  part,  desires  to  keep  out  of  warfare.  She  has  to 
that  end  made  many  arbitration  treaties  with  other 
nations,  and  she  thinks  that  she  has  at  least  removed 
the  danger  of  being  attacked.  All  the  same,  up  to  the 
outbreak  of  this  great  European  War  she  lived  in  a  cer- 
tain amount  of  dread  of  a  war  with  Germany,  and 
many  of  her  citizens,  as,  for  instance,  the  late  Price 
Collier,  held  that,  with  time,  such  a  war  was  even 
probable.  America  as  a  pure  democracy  would  vote 
against  war  every  time.  The  power  of  government  is 
not,  however,  in  the  hands  of  the  democracy.  Finan- 
ciers have  the  power  to  sway  the  councils  of  the 
Government  to  their  private  ends,  and  so  little  wars  are 


AMERICANS  i8i 

still  possible.  A  war  against  Mexico,  or  against  Spain, 
or  some  other  third-rate  power  is  always  a  possibility, 
and  though  it  is  against  the  American  ideal  it  would  be 
tolerated,  inasmuch  as  America  stands  to  lose  little  by 
such  a  course.  But  a  war  with  Japan,  though  possible 
and  even  probable  from  some  points  of  view,  would 
cause  a  great  outcry  in  the  States.  For  the  Americans 
believe  in  universal  peace. 

America  believes  in  health  and  success  and  prosperity. 
''America  has  no  use  for  a  sick  man"  —  to  quote  a  com- 
mon saying.  She  has  little  sympathy  with  failure. 
What  is  beauty  in  the  life  of  the  old  world  means  noth- 
ing to  her.  She  admires  ruins  and  curiosities  and  curios, 
but  in  the  spirit  of  the  collector.  She  has  a  contempt, 
born  of  ignorance,  for  ranks,  for  ceremonies,  rituals, 
liturgies.  For  her,  Russian,  German,  Norwegian, 
Englishman,  Frenchman,  are,  except  for  a  difference  in 
language  which  can  be  overcome,  one  and  the  same. 
They  are,  roughly  speaking,  of  the  same  capabilities. 
If  she  recognises  differences  in  national  individuality 
or  personal  individuaHty,  she  does  not  love  the  differ- 
ences, does  not  prize  the  differences.  Her  own  notions 
of  success  and  goodness  she  considers  to  be  the  real 
notions,  her  own  justice  and  fairness  to  be  the  true 
criterion  of  justice  and  fairness.  The  characteristics 
of  her  own  destiny  must,  she  thinks,  show  the  charac- 
teristics of  the  destiny  of  other  countries.  If  other 
countries  are  not  like  her  they  are  simply  backward. 


i82  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

Though  there  is  a  great  deal  of  Liberal  sentiment  in 
America,  the  Americans  are  not  Liberal.  In  "Chang- 
ing Russia"  I  defined  Liberalism  as  "NationaKsm  as 
opposed  to  Imperialism;  respect  for  the  rights  of  in- 
dividuals as  opposed  to  Collectivism ;  a  belief  in  little 
nations  rather  than  in  large  empires.  Liberalism 
encourages  national  characteristics,  distinctive  lan- 
guage, dress,  custom,  the  barriers  which  keep  people 
apart."  America,  by  the  very  fact  of  its  conglomera- 
tive  formation,  is  opposed  to  these  national  character- 
istics, has  a  contempt  for  these  characteristics.  She 
cannot,  therefore,  bring  much  light  to  the  settlement  of 
the  European  struggle  on  the  desired  Liberal  and  na- 
tional lines  of  recognition  of  the  rights  of  small  peoples 
not  to  be  Prussianised  or  Russianised  or  AngliJ&ed. 
America's  quite  natural  desire  is  to  Americanise  every- 
one who  comes  to  her. 


Ill 

INDIVIDUALS 


III.    INDIVIDUALS 

I 

The   Great  White  Tsar 

The  cannon  speak  louder  than  the  voices  of  men  in 
this  war.  Never  were  men  so  thrown  into  insignifi- 
cance ;  never  was  there  such  a  disparity  between  men 
and  guns.  Battles  are  won  by  guns  rather  than  by  men. 
It  often  seems  as  if  the  issimus  tacked  on  to  the  word 
general  were  a  diminutive,  not  a  superlative,  and  that 
Generalissimus  Joffre  must  be  some  sort  of  wonderful 
little  ivory  model  or  toy  and  not  a  man.  We  have  only 
to  read  one  of  our  fine  old  war-dramas,  such  as  Richard 
III.,  to  realise  how  much  more  did  personal  character 
and  nobility  count  in  the  old  days  than  now.  When 
the  history  of  this  vast  war  is  written,  it  will  be  almost 
impossible  to  take  the  personal  history  of  some  individ- 
ual man  and  say,  ''There,  in  one  man's  hfe  and  passion 
lies  the  whole  story  of  this  European  strife."  The 
only  figure  that  does  stand  out  at  present  is  that  of 
the  Kaiser,  and  possibly  a  Shakespeare  of  our  age 
would  find  in  the  Kaiser's  story  the  epic  of  the  war. 
Unfortunately,  we  dishke  the  Kaiser  too  much  to  con- 

i8s 


i86  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

sider  him  calmly  as  Milton  did  Satan,  or  Shakespeare 
Richard  III.  It  will  be  years  before  we  can  regard 
the  Kaiser  with  clear  eyes.  But,  meanwhile,  there 
is  one  other  figure  in  this  war  that  stands  out  on  the 
popular  vision  very  remarkably,  and  that  is  the  Tsar 
Nicholas  II.,  once  called  the  Great  White  Tsar. 

When  the  Tsar  came  to  the  throne  he  showed  himself 
\   to  be  an  idealist,  even  a  Utopian  ideahst,  by  his  pas- 
sionate efforts  for  the  establishment  of  universal  peace. 
The  cause  of  peace  was  chiefly  associated  with  the 
name  of  the  Tsar.     It  was  strange  that  this  great 
absolute  monarch  should  associate  himself  with  the 
cause  dearest  of  all  to  democrats  and  Liberals,  strange 
that  he  should  be  the  colleague  of  men  like  W.  T.  Stead 
and  Andrew  Carnegie.     Many  said  that  the  Tsar  was 
not  sincere.     The  sarcastic  and  cynical  found  Nicholas 
delivered  wholly  to  their  untender  mercy  when  at  last 
owing  to  non-acceptance   of    Japanese    demands  war 
broke  out  between  Russia  and  Japan.     But  a  worse 
denial  of  ideals  was  to  follow  when  the  great  revo- 
lutionary outburst  was  put  down  ruthlessly  by  military 
force.     The  Tsar  became  "the  man  of  blood."      People 
associated  the  ghastly  carnage  of  the  war  with  the 
dreadful  loss  of  life  at  the  Coronation  crush  in  Moscow, 
and  with  the  firing  on  the  workmen  of  Father  Gapon's 
procession,  and  with  many  another  incident  in  which 
the  Tsar's  name  was  connected  with  the  injury  and 
death  of  his  subjects.     Perhaps  no  one  has  been  more 


THE   GREAT   WHITE   TSAR  187 

hated  in  his  time  than  the  Tsar.    No  one  has  been 
more  cursed. 

And  yet  despite  all  that  seemed  against  him,  many- 
people  quietly  kept  their  faith  in  him.  The  most 
touching  example  is  perhaps  that  of  W.  T.  Stead. 
Stead  and  many  others  saw  in  the  Tsar  the  granter  of 
the  Duma,  a  new  Peter  the  Great,  a  God-chosen 
monarch  leading  his  nation  through  the  most  difficult 
and  hazardous  ways  of  national  evolution.  They  held 
that  it  was  comparatively  easy  for  Alexander  II.  to  give 
Hberty  to  the  serfs,  but  that  it  needed  a  stupendous 
genius  to  cope  with  the  difi&culties  that  that  liberation 
would  lead  to.  It  must  always  be  remembered  that 
no  Russian  monarch  previous  to  Nicholas  II.  has  had 
to  face  100,000,000  free  peasants  and  working  men. 
It  must  always  have  been  said  of  him,  even  if  he  had 
been  stricken  in  the  revolution,  that  he  was  confronted 
by  problems  that  only  genius  or  sacred  simplicity 
could  solve. 

He  survived  his  passion  for  peace,  his  unfortunate 
war  with  Japan,  his  wild  and  bloody  revolutionary  era 
—  to  be  laughed  at.  Attention  was  drawn  to  the  fact 
that  tens  of  thousands  of  soldiers  Hned  the  railway 
track  whenever  he  made  a  journey  to  a  city  in  his 
dominion,  and  that  he  dare  not  stir  from  his  palace 
without  an  army  to  guard  him,  that  before  he  went  to 
the  third  city  of  the  Empire  he  had  several  thousand 
people  arrested  as  suspicious  characters,  that  in  many 


i88  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

parts  of  Russia  he  dare  not  show  himself  even  with 
these  precautions.  The  precautions  did  cause  one 
to  pause  and  reflect,  and  yet  we  remember  how  at 
Kieff  the  Jewish  poHce  agent  Bogroff  managed  to  get 
into  the  theatre  in  spite  of  all  care,  and  only  at  the 
last  moment  changed  his  mind  and  shot  Stolypin 
instead  of  His  Majesty.  The  precautions  seemed 
necessary. 

The  revolutionaries  said  the  Tsar  was  safe,  he  did 
not  count,  he  was  stupid,  and  his  survival  helped  their 
cause  more  than  could  his  death.  They  meant  this  in  a 
sinister  way.  They  meant :  the  Tsar  by  his  wickedness 
and  folly  shows  more  clearly  than  we  could  show  by 
propaganda  that  the  day  of  Tsars  is  over  and  that  it  is 
better  for  mankind  to  dispense  with  Tsars  altogether. 
The  revolutionaries  were  wholly  mistaken. 

The  Tsar's  life  and  personal  character  are  a  mystery. 
He  is  beyond  definite  comment  in  his  own  country. 
Unless  he  shows  himself,  no  one  can  say  what  he  is.  It 
remains  till  now  to  make  a  fair  estimate  of  his  ideals 
and  his  passion.  The  Tsar  to-day  has  outlived  the  ac- 
cusation of  insincerity,  has  outlived  all  his  unpopularity, 
and  has  given  the  lie  to  all  that  has  been  said  against 
him.  He  has  no  doubt  gone  through  great  spiritual 
evolution  in  these  parlous  and  suffering  times.  His 
mind  has  been  working  all  the  time,  and  to-day  he 
emerges  as  a  great  serious  monarch  whose  entire 
thought  and  continuous   anxiety  have   been,  ''What 


THE   GREAT  WHITE  TSAR  189 

must  be  done  to  save  my  people  from  their  dangers, 
and  to  put  them  on  the  high  road  of  a  great  destiny  ?  " 

The  personal  work  of  the  Tsar  shows  itself  in  the 
courageous  attack  which  he  made  on  the  great  corrupt 
police  system  which  had  sold  itself  in  part  to  the 
revolutionary  party.  The  police  system  in  Russia  is 
in  some  respects  more  powerful  than  the  Tsardom  it- 
self, and  it  can  almost  always  procure  the  assassination 
of  its  persecutors.  The  Tsar  very  seriously  endangered 
his  life  by  his  efforts.  Next  was  the  more  peaceful 
but  less  easy  problem  of  giving  more  land  to  the 
peasants  and  settling  them  on  small  holdings.  Next 
was  the  extraordinary  manifesto  against  drunkenness 
made  in  the  spring  of  this  year,  when  the  Imperial 
sanction  was  given  to  a  campaign  for  local  veto  and 
several  hundred  thousand  vodka  shops  were  closed. 
In  passing,  let  us  remember  the  amnesty  given  to  revo- 
lutionary exiles,  permitting  Gorky,  among  others,  to 
return  to  Russia  unharmed.  Then  there  was  the  Tsar 
and  the  war,  the  noble  proclamations  and  brother's 
hand  extended  towards  Poland,  the  religious  pilgrimage 
to  the  famous  Russian  shrines  to  pray  for  Russia,  and 
the  complete  abolition  by  Imperial  Ukase  of  the  sale  of 
vodka,  first  for  a  month,  then  for  the  space  of  the  dura- 
tion of  the  war,  and  now  —  by  promise  —  for  ever. 

So  on  the  day  of  the  commencement  of  hostilities  by 
Turkey,  the  great  street-mobs  of  Moscow  and  Petro- 
grad  carry  the  Tsar's  portrait  through  the  capitals, 


190  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

singing  ''God  save  the  Tsar"  and  cheering  and  shout- 
ing with  indescribable  enthusiasm.  To-day,  the  Tsar 
goes  about  his  kingdom  unguarded  and  without  pre- 
cautions. He  goes  without  hesitation  to  the  front,  to 
the  inspiriting  of  his  soldiers  at  Ossovetz.  He  visits 
Roman  Catholic  and  Polish  Vilna  and  salutes  there 
the  emblems  of  Catholicism  and  Polish  nationaHsm. 
When  some  years  ago  I  wrote  in  the  middle  of  "Un- 
discovered Russia"  —  "God  save  the  Tsar!"  it  was 
taken  as  a  paradox  and  even  quoted  against  the  book  by 
one  formidable  Radical  journal.  To-day,  "God  save 
the  Tsar!"  is  a  clamorous  sentiment  of  the  Russian 
streets. 

Before  the  Tsar  passed  the  uniform  for  the  common 
soldier  in  the  war  he  asked  that  a  complete  suit  be 
sent  to  him,  and  with  it  boots  and  rifle  and  full  kit. 
And  he  himself  took  off  his  royal  clothes  and  put  on 
the  soldier's  uniform  and  shouldered  the  kit  and  the 
gun  and  walked  in  them  on  his  estate  in  Livadia  some 
two  hours.  He  was  photographed  so,  and  has  allowed 
the  photograph  to  be  reproduced  for  common  sale  and 
for  distribution  among  the  soldiers. 

He  is  a  simple  man.  He  inherits  the  awful  power 
of  his  ancestors  but  he  would  Hke  to  spend  a  day  as  a 
common  soldier  in  the  trenches.  Such  an  action  would 
resound  throughout  history  and  win  the  hearts  of 
the  whole  non- German  world.  But  necessarily  the 
Tsar  is  to  the  peasants  someone  unearthly,  a  giant,  a 


THE   GREAT  WHITE  TSAR  191 

demi-god.  They  would  not  really  be  well  influenced 
by  such  an  action,  probably  would  not  understand  it. 
Still,  who  knows?  Noble  deeds  take  care  of  them- 
selves. 

At  the  war  goes  on,  the  sincerity  and  the  nobihty 
of  the  Tsar  mil  be  a  great  factor  in  the  giving  of  vic- 
tory. The  sacred  simphcity,  kindness,  and  earnestness 
of  the  Tsar  emerge  as  a  guarantee  of  the  ultimate  issue 
of  this  struggle,  but  also  of  the  marvellous  and  healthful 
future  of  the  vast  Russian  Empire  and  of  the  wonderful 
Russian  people.  It  is  good  to  see  in  the  ideahst,  the 
Peace  Tsar,  the  same  personahty  of  to-day,  but  made 
wiser,  stronger,  simpler  by  suffering  and  responsibility 
—  the  Great  White  Tsar. 


II 

M.   Sazonof 

Though  I  have  never  been  in  the  capital  before,  I 
have  friends  there,  thanks  to  my  books,  which  stand 
for  me  to  those  who  have  not  met  me.  It  is  very- 
pleasant  to  meet  people  who  have  an  intimate  know- 
ledge of  you  even  before  they  have  seen  your  face.  At 
Petrograd  I  had  such  a  pleasant  meeting  with  Madame 
Sazonof  and  her  husband  the  Foreign  Minister,  with  one 
of  the  ladies-in-waiting  on  the  Empress,  and  with 
Madame  Novikof,  so  full  of  years  and  yet  so  energetic, 
M.P.  for  Russia,  as  Disraeli  called  her.  Madame 
Novikof  I  had  met  in  London;  the  others  I  met  for 
the  first  time. 

We  may  call  this,  as  in  reality  it  is,  an  interview  with 
M.  Sazonof.  I  was  very  glad  to  see  the  Russian 
Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs  face  to  face,  and  to  come 
into  personal  contact  with  a  man  whose  voice  counts 
for  so  much  in  the  councils  of  Russia  and  of  the  Allies. 
A  hard  man,  yet  kindly,  brisk,  alert,  European.  You 
would  not  say  you  were  in  the  presence  of  a  Russian 
except  for  the  conversational  vivacity  of  the  Minister, 
and  a  certain  Slavonic  impulsiveness  which  lurks  only 

192 


M.   SAZONOF  193 

half  suppressed,  half  masked  in  the  eyes  of  this  strong 
and  determined  man.  He  has  an  EngHsh  manner,  an 
English  way  of  living,  and  evidently  has  a  strong 
personal  liking  for  EngHsh  things  and  EngHsh  ways. 
He  has  lived  eight  years  in  England  in  his  time,  and 
so  knows  us  pretty  well.  He,  as  much  as  anyone  on 
either  side,  realises  the  value  of  mutual  friendship,  not 
only  now  when  we  can  co-operate  with  soldiers  and 
cannon  and  sailors  and  ships,  but  afterwards,  for  the 
working  out  together  of  the  problems  of  peace. 

I  had  a  pleasant  hour's  talk  at  the  Minister's  house  in 
the  Downing  Street  of  Petrograd,  a  fine  old  crimson 
walled  mansion  on  the  Dvortsovy  Proyezd. 

You  enter  from  a  door  paraUel  to  that  which  leads  to 
the  department.  A  lackey  meets  you;  you  are  put 
into  a  tiny  lift  and  slowly  raised  to  a  parquet-floored 
gallery  leading  to  a  bright  reception  room  warmed  and 
illumined  by  an  open  log  fire.  Madame  Sazonof  came 
forw^ard  to  meet  me,  and  with  her  an  interesting  dog,  a 
crafty  Siberian  laika,  that  walked  behind  me  and  caught 
my  instep  in  his  mouth  each  time  I  lifted  my  right  foot. 

''He  is  finding  out  about  you,"  said  Madame  Sazonof 
with  a  smile.  "He  always  makes  sure  of  everyone  who 
comes  here.  He  almost  frightened  the  Austrian  Am- 
bassador away  altogether,  and  in  the  days  before  the 
war  the  Ambassador  used  to  send  up  to  have  the  dog 
taken  away  before  he  would  make  his  appearance." 

"He  knew  who  was  the  enemy,"  said  I. 


194  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

"Yes,  you  see,  now,  he  quite  takes  to  you." 

I  barked  at  him.  We  were  soon  on  very  friendly 
terms  and  he  sat  on  his  tail  all  through  luncheon  and 
looked  up  into  my  eyes,  and  I  was  advised  to  give  him 
little  bits,  which  I  did. 

M.  Sazonof  came  in  and  we  spoke  together  in  Russian. 
But  when  we  went  in  to  luncheon,  an  EngUsh  luncheon 
by  the  way,  we  all  spoke  English.  The  Russians  spoke 
so  well  and  so  charmingly  that  you  might  imagine 
you  were  hstening  to  a  party  of  Enghsh  talking  in  a 
similar  circle  in  London. 

The  Minister  made  Hght  of  the  danger  of  being  at- 
tacked in  London  by  our  Russophobes.  What  he 
feared  in  going  to  England  was  the  Channel  crossing, 
no  more.  He  thought  I  might  have  a  bad  time  going 
home,  might  get  captured  by  the  Germans,  and  he 
thought  I  had  better  stay  in  Russia.  I  said  I  thought 
of  going  by  Archangel,  but  he  assured  me  it  was  closed 
by  ice. 

We  talked  of  the  Tsar.  "I  wonder  if  people  in  Eng- 
land reaHse  what  a  great  thing  the  vodka  prohibition 
is?"  said  Sazonof.  "We  are  sober  from  end  to  end. 
We  look  for  extraordinary  results  when  once  the  war  is 
over  and  we  have  time  to  develop  in  peace." 

"It  is  making  the  Tsar  very  popular,"  said  I.  "Even 
in  our  country  many  of  those  who  have  felt  themselves 
out  of  sympathy  with  Russia  begin  to  point  to  the  Tsar 
as  to  an  ideal  monarch." 


Dancing  round  the  Rouble  :  Cossack  shows  the  Tsar's  head  on 
the  silver  coin,  while  the  others  sing  the  National  Anthem  and 
dance  round. 


M.   SAZONOF  195 

"  Isn't  the  Tsar  splendid  ?  "  said  a  young  Baroness  who 
was  present ;  and  she  told  a  story  of  the  Tsar  visiting 
a  hospital  in  Poland,  and  talking  with  the  soldiers. 

"He  entered  the  hospital  accompanied  by  many 
officials  and  court  dignitaries,  and  passed  with  them  in 
one  of  the  great  general  rooms,  where  lay  several  hun- 
dred wounded  men.  The  chief  surgeon  was  about  to 
show  him  round,  when  the  Tsar,  evidently  in  great 
emotion,  turned  to  him  and  the  rest  of  the  decorated 
officials  around  him  and  said:  'Leave  me  here  alone.' 
They  bowed  and  scraped,  but  did  not,  however,  go 
out.  'Leave  me  here  alone  with  the  soldiers,'  said  the 
Tsar  again;  'I  wish  to  speak  to  them  myself.'  When 
he  had  said  these  words  the  surgeon  and  the  rest  slowly, 
and  as  it  were  unwillingly,  went  out,  and  the  Tsar 
was  left  alone  with  his  poor  wounded  soldiers;  and 
he  talked  with  them  for  a  whole  hour.  So  he  got  rid  of 
that  terrible  old  background  of  official  Russia,  and  was 
himself.  Don't  you  think  it  a  beautiful  picture  of 
the  Tsar  alone  with  his  people  ?  " 

"The  Tsar  has  a  beautiful  character,"  said  Madame 
Sazonof.  "Everyone  who  comes  into  touch  with  him 
personally,  feels  his  tenderness  toward  his  fellow  men, 
his  delicate  consideration  for  all  people  with  whom  he 
has  to  deal." 

After  lunch  we  adjourned  to  a  beautiful  old  room, 
warmed  and  lit  by  a  log  fire  burning  on  a  large  hearth. 
Here  we  had  coffee,  and  I  chatted  with  the  Minister  by 


196  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

the  fire ;  whilst  the  ladies  sat  round  a  table  beside  one  of 
the  great  windows  and  talked.  Among  other  things 
that  Sazonof  said  were  the  following :  — 

"I  hope  you  are  making  up  your  minds  to  have  a 
larger  army,  not  only  now,  but  after  the  war  is  over. 
Your  fleet  is  splendid.  It  is  surpassing  all  expecta- 
tions, but  your  army  was  far  too  weak  when  the  war 
broke  out,  and  is  too  weak  for  your  Imperial  needs. 

''I  think  that,  as  the  years  go  on,  there  will  be  even 
greater  scope  for  Russian  and  British  friendship 
than  before.  We  have  yet  to  know  one  another  better, 
of  course.  There  is  really  no  room  for  jealousy  be- 
tween the  two  Empires. 

"What  is  the  feeling  in  your  country  about  the 
settlement?  How  do  they  look  now  at  Constantino- 
ple? We  should  much  prize  the  opinion,  not  only  of 
the  British  Government,  but  of  the  British  people ;  for 
we  realise  that,  when  peace  is  made,  it  will  be  a  peace 
between  peoples  as  much,  and  even  more,  than  between 
Governments." 

I  asked  about  the  autonomy  of  Poland,  and  the  posi- 
tion of  the  Jews  there.  I  suggested  that  something  be 
done  to  help  out  the  Jews  who  wish  to  go  to  America. 

''They  are  not  likely  to  go  in  great  numbers,"  said  he. 
"They  don't  want  to  go.  They  had  much  rather  settle 
in  Russia  or  in  Siberia." 

"Is  anything  likely  to  be  done  to  relieve  the  tension 
of  the  Jewish  problem?" 


M.   SAZONOF  197 

M.  Sazonof  thought  it  possible  that  they  might  be 
excused  military  service  in  future  if  they  wished  it.  He 
recognised  the  great  difficulty  of  dealing  with  the 
Jewish  problem,  but  spoke  enthusiastically  of  the 
coming  restoration  of  Poland.  Russia  ought  to  have 
made  up  the  quarrel  with  the  suffering  Poles  long  ago. 

Finally,  we  spoke  of  the  prospect  of  Russo-British 
friendship,  and  of  the  mutual  co-operation  of  the  two 
great  powers  in  Asia.  He  thought  that  with  the  war 
the  old  Asiatic  rivalry  would  completely  disappear. 
Russian  civilisation  was  a  help  to  British  civilisation. 
The  Christian  churches  on  the  North  of  the  Himalayas 
were  brother  churches  of  the  English  on  the  other  side. 

A  rather  amusing  thing  happened  to  me  the  day  after 
I  had  seen  Sazonof.  A  secret  agent  took  me  apart  and 
said : 

"You  saw  Sazonof  yesterday,  what  did  you  think 
of  him,  is  he  a  strong  man? " 

"Yes,  a  strong  man  I  should  say,  with  plenty  of  com- 
mon sense.  Of  course,  he  knows  where  to  look  to  take 
his  cue." 

The  agent  lowered  his  voice  and  said  in  a  hushed 
whisper : 

"  Where  would  you  say  he  looked,  to  Baron ?" 

and  he  mentioned  a  certain  influential  German  Russian 
supposed  to  be  carrying  on  an  intrigue  in  favour  of  peace. 

"  Why,  no,"  said  I,  "to  the  Tsar  I  meant,  of  course." 

And  I  felt  lik,e  a  person  speaking  in  some  novel  of 
diplomatic  life. 


IV 
POLICIES 


IV.   POLICIES 
I 

The  Vodka  Prohibition 

The  Russian  nation  spent  £9,000,000  more  on  vodka 
in  the  year  19 13-14  than  in  191 2-13.  It  spent  £50,000- 
000  more  than  it  did  ten  years  ago.  The  population 
increased  by  some  thirty  per  cent  in  ten  years,  but  the 
sale  of  vodka  fifty  per  cent.  According  to  the  estimate 
of  Count  Witte,  made  in  February,  1914,  in  the  Gosu- 
darstvenny  Sovet,  or  Council  of  State,  the  nation  would 
have  spent  during  the  current  financial  year  no  less 
than  £100,000,000  on  strong  drink. 

These  figures,  growing  steadily  more  alarming  year 
by  year,  at  last  necessitated  a  broad  national  con- 
sideration of  the  whole  subject  of  temperance.  For 
some  months  in  19 14  Russia  talked  of  nothing  but  the 
struggle  against  drunkenness. 

Count  Witte,  who  was  responsible  for  the  acquire- 
ment by  the  Russian  Government  of  the  monopoly  — 
i.e.  of  the  whole  business  of  selling  vodka,  an  excellent 
measure,  both  financially  and  morally,  came  forward 
to  defend  his  good  name  and  to  point  out  to  the  Govern- 
ment that  the  time  was  ripe  for  their  turning  the  liquor 
control  to  the  moral  benefit  of  the  nation.     A  great 


202  RUSSIA   AND   THE  WORLD 

many  people  are  ready  to  ascribe  to  Count  Witte 
the  blame  of  the  increasing  Russian  insobriety  —  even 
Socialists,  to  whom  one  would  think  the  idea  of  State 
control  would  be  especially  pleasing,  are  ready  to  cast 
that  aspersion.  But,  obviously,  Russia  had  every- 
thing to  gain  by  this  simplification  of  the  whole  vast 
trade  of  seUing  spirits.  At  the  Tsar's  word,  in  this 
place  or  in  that,  in  this  province  or  that  district,  the 
sale  of  vodka  could  be  forbidden. 

"If  I  had  now  the  power  of  approach  to  His  Majesty 
as  a  member  of  the  Government,"  said  Count  Witte, 
"I  would  advise  His  Majesty,  without  waiting  for  the 
decision  of  the  Duma  or  of  the  Council  of  State,  to 
publish  a  ukase  to  the  effect  that  His  Majesty  now 
finds  it  indispensable  to  lay  the  foundation  of  Russian 
temperance  by  limiting  the  gross  sale  of  vodka  to  £900,- 
000,000." 

The  balance  of  superfluous  revenue,  strange  to  say, 
Count  Witte  would  have  given  to  temperance  societies 
—  £10,000,000  to  Bands  of  Hope.  No  Government 
outside  a  novel  would  part  with  such  an  immense  sum 
of  money  to  amateur  societies,  though,  of  course,  the 
Young  Men's  Christian  Association  would  do  a  great 
deal  for  sobriety  with  £10,000,000. 

A  great  number  of  people  went  much  further  than 
Count  Witte,  and  said:  "Forbid  the  sale  altogether, 
forbid  it  in  certain  districts,  forbid  it  in  certain  provinces 
for  a  start,  or  allow  local  option."    But  the  late  Pre- 


THE  VODKA  PROHIBITION  203 

mier,  M.  Kokovtsoff,  generally  negatived  these  pro- 
posals by  his  fear  of  the  outbreak  of  general  illicit 
trading  in  spirits,  and  his  disinclination  to  deprive 
those  who  already  drink  temperately.  He  did  not 
look  for,  nor  indeed  expect,  the  complete  abstinence 
of  the  Russian  nation  —  did  anyone  ? 

Russia,  however,  was  in  a  position  of  real  difficulty. 
Her  industrial  villages,  and  those  barracks  of  workmen 
and  workwomen  that  have  sprung  up  around  great 
country  factories  were  in  such  a  state  on  Sundays  and 
festivals  that  it  was  extremely  unpleasant,  and  some- 
times dangerous,   for  a  well-dressed  person  to  pass 
through   them.    They   were   infested   with   mobs   of 
hooligans ;  up  and  down  the  main  street  a  dozen  men 
and  as  many  women  might  be  found  yelling,  singing, 
screeching  like  demented  creatures.     In  almost  every 
house  someone  would  be  drunk;    yet  in  the  remoter 
agricultural  villages  you  would  seldom  come  across 
anything  of  the  kind.    It  was  the  accompaniment  of 
better  wages,  lack  of  pleasure  in  factory  hfe,  lack  of 
the  education  which  a  peasant  can   do  without  but 
which   a  factory   worker   must    have.      But    it    was 
something  more  than  mere  weakness,  it  was  a  menace 
to  respectable  society.     No  paper  could  ever  dream  of 
recording  a  tenth  of  the  assaults,  murders,  robberies, 
and  obscenities  that  occurred  in  the  industrial  cities 
and  villages  and  factory-barracks  of  Russia.     They 
were  unchronicled. 


204  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

The  Russian  Government  before  the  Tsar  stepped  in 
had  only  an  old  remedy  —  to  imprison  offenders. 
Many  people  thought  that  though  imprisonment  was 
a  wrong  method  it  was  indeed  efficacious.  But  the 
astonishing  truth  was  dawning  on  the  Russian  people 
that  if  Russia  had  ten  times  as  many  prisoners  it  could 
not  accommodate  its  wrongdoers.  The  police  all  over 
the  country  knew  that  it  was  no  use  arresting  drunkards 
and  assaulters.  If  they  arrested  them  there  was  no 
place  to  put  them ;  they  could  only  be  reprimanded 
and  released.  In  Vladikavkaz  not  so  long  ago  there  was 
a  drunken  fray  in  the  main  street,  stabbing,  firing  of 
revolvers ;  some  twenty  or  thirty  people  were  arrested, 
but  there  was  nothing  to  be  done  with  them;  they 
were  all  released. 

"Siberia  is  vast,"  said  some.  But  already  Siberia 
claims  to  be  a  young  Hving  State,  and  notifies  Russia 
that  she  must  no  longer  be  treated  as  a  penal  settlement. 

A  great  deal  of  money  has  been  voted  each  year 
for  the  encouragement  of  sobriety;  and  in  the  spring 
one  of  the  Moscow  papers  made  a  special  inquiry  in 
every  province  of  what  was  being  done  with  the  money, 
and  printed  a  most  interesting  report. 

At  Nizhni  Novgorod  Fair  the  authorities  had  estab- 
lished a  temperance  museum,  two  reading  rooms,  two 
tea-houses,  an  open-air  theatre,  and  a  home  for  drunk- 
ards. Almost  every  province  had  established  a  whole 
series  of  village  reading-rooms,  generally  in  the  post 


THE   VODKA   PROHIBITION  205 

office  and  spread  on  long  tables  many  anti-alcohol 
sheets  and  church  papers.  The  literature  was  deeply 
uninteresting,  and  I  may  say  that  I  have  visited  many 
such  free  Ubraries  and  have  rarely  found  anyone  reading 
there.  In  many  places,  however,  cinematograph  shows 
were  arranged,  and  to  them  the  population  flocked, 
amateur  theatricals  were  planned,  farces  and  operettas 
were  performed,  the  Tango  was  danced,  and  the  latest 
comic  song  was  brought  down.  In  some  rare  cases 
evening  classes  were  arranged.  In  the  Jewish  Pale 
free  legal  help  was  given. 

All  but  one  of  the  reports  sent  in  indicated  that 
despite  large  amounts  of  money  voted  for  temperance 
aid  drunkenness  was  strongly  on  the  increase ;  and  for 
that  reason  there  was  some  doubt  as  to  the  advisability 
of  giving  another  10,000,000  roubles  to  the  cause. 

There  were  real  natural  forces  fighting  against 
drunkenness,  and  winning  —  the  lighting  up  of  personal 
ambition,  the  cinematograph,  the  Evangelical  move- 
ment. The  Church  of  Russia,  though  it  did  not  exclude 
the  drunkard  or  evildoer,  stood  steadily  for  sobriety. 
It  did  not  say  it  was  a  sin  to  drink,  and,  indeed,  its 
own  priests  drank  lustily  —  even  to  excess  upon  occa- 
sion —  but  it  stood  utterly  against  brutal  drunkenness. 
It  may  seem  strange  to  English  people  to  differentiate ; 
but  there  is  a  difference  between  the  drunkenness  which 
comes  from  melancholy  or  from  true  sociabihty  and  the 
drunkenness  which  is  just  beastliness,  the  drunkenness 


2o6  RUSSIA  AND   THE   WORLD 

with  which  are  associated  coarseness,  lying,  fighting, 
and  stealing  —  the  difference  between  being  "drunk  as 
a  lord  "  and  "  drunk  as  a  Kaffir."  It  is  against  the  latter 
that  Russia  has  had  to  fight.  It  can  never,  without 
racial  change,  get  rid  of  its  melancholy  and  its  social 
spirit. 

Kharkov,  they  say,  abounds  in  temperance  brother- 
hoods. Theosophy  is  on  the  increase,  also  vegetarian- 
ism, and  evangelism.  All  these  make  for  sobriety.  It 
is  somewhat  saddening  to  see  the  rents  in  the  Church 
since  religious  freedom  was  granted  in  Russia.  But 
there  is  true  consolation  in  the  fact  that  the  flocking 
converts  are  earnest  men  and  women  who  feel  they  want 
to  lead  a  new  life.  They  take  our  Western  forms 
and  ethics ;  they  despise  the  drunkard,  they  are  puri- 
tanical in  judgment,  but  they  are  a  hardening  and 
strengthening  power  in  the  nation. 

A  most  extraordinary  phenomenon,  the  Russian 
nation's  sudden  passion  for  sobriety !  It  seemed 
something  passing,  something  merely  of  the  moment 
when  it  first  gave  notice  of  itself  in  Press  articles  and 
public  speeches.  But  when  the  Tsar  gave  his  famous 
rescript  to  M.  Bark  asking  him  to  hmit  the  sale  of 
vodka,  and  when  what  was  practically  a  national 
measure  of  local  veto  was  adopted,  the  whole  of  Russia 
from  Tsar  to  peasant  woman  was  swept  with  a  tem- 
perance ardour. 

Long  before  the  war  thousands  of  spirit  shops  had 


THE  VODKA   PROHIBITION  207 

been  sealed  owing  to  popular  demand.  The  drunkards 
themselves  petitioned  to  have  the  vodka  supply  cut  off. 
For  those  with  an  eye  to  the  future  of  Russia  this  was 
an  astonishingly  significant  spectacle. 

Still  Russia  was  a  long  way  off  from  national  sobriety. 
We  looked  for  something  else  to  combat  desire  for  drink. 
Russia  would  have  to  survey  her  industrial  regions 
and  drain  her  human  marshes  systematically.  The 
gold-mining  villages,  for  instance,  still  remained  what 
they  were.  It  seemed  evident  that  something  more 
drastic  would  have  to  be  done. 

The  drastic  thing  arrived.  The  war  broke  out  and 
at  once,  by  Imperial  Ukase,  every  vodka  shop  in  the 
kingdom  was  closed,  the  sale  of  vodka  in  restaurants 
and  in  railway  buffets  was  prohibited,  and  at  a  stroke 
of  the  pen  vodka  was  unobtainable.  Contrary  to 
expectation,  there  was  not  even  any  illicit  trading  in 
spirits  —  at  least  none  to  speak  of.  Russia  was  made 
sober  not  by  act  of  Parliament,  but  by  something  more 
powerful  than  that,  more  ready,  more  simple  —  by 
word  of  Tsar. 

In  the  early  days  of  the  hostilities  it  was  a  common- 
place to  thank  God  for  the  German  declaration  of  war ; 
it  had  closed  as  if  by  magic  every  spirit  shop  in  Russia 
and  Siberia.  It  had  liberated  town  and  countryside 
from  the  dreariness  of  drink. 

Great  days  for  the  Tresveniki,  a  Russian  sect  that 
preaches  nothing  but  temperance  —  it  was  founded  by 


2o8  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

a  simple  Moscow  man  who  gathered  an  enormous 
number  of  adherents,  Orthodox  as  well  as  Russian 
Non-conformists.  They  drew  up  the  great  petition, 
which,  after  ten  weeks  of  the  war  and  of  enforced 
sobriety,  was  presented  to  the  Tsar,  a  petition  for  the^ 
prohibition  of  vodka  for  ever. 

It  seemed  preposterous  to  ask  the  Tsar  for  complete 
prohibition  in  the  face  of  Russia's  tremendous  war 
debts.  The  Tsar  had  promised  that  no  more  vodka 
should  be  sold  until  the  end  of  the  war;  and  that 
promise  had  been  greeted  with  great  satisfaction.  It 
had  been  taken  as  a  maximum.  The  hope  was  that, 
even  after  the  war,  vodka  would  never  be  sold  in  the 
old  easy  way,  at  a  moderate  price  in  small  bottles,  to 
whoever  asked  for  it. 

But  the  impossible  happened.  The  Tsar  not  only 
received  the  petitioners,  but  answered  them  in  the 
following  significant  sentence : 

"I  had  already  decided  on  total  prohibition  before  I 
read  your  petition." 

So  Russia  was  rejoiced  by  the  Tsar,  by  one  of  the 
most  amazing  personal  acts  in  the  modern  history  of 
civilisation. 

And  it  is  a  fact  the  vodka  shop  is  closed.  Many 
people  in  England  seem  inclined  to  doubt  the  reality  of 
this  measure;  but  I  can  vouch  for  it,  who  have  seen 
Russia  sober.  Not  only  has  the  sale  of  vodka  been 
stopped,  but  the  sale  of  beer  also.     It  is  impossible  to 


THE   VODKA   PROHIBITION  209 

find  a  drunken  man  on  a  festival,  or  on  an  ordinary  day, 
anywhere  in  the  Russian  Empire,  except  in  the  Caucasus 
and  parts  of  Central  Asia,  where  the  Government  has 
never  held  the  monopoly  of  the  sale  of  intoxicating 
liquors.  It  is  quiet  in  the  industrial  villages,  in  the 
"factories,"  and  in  the  mining  settlements.  The  old 
songs  are  sung;  there  is  the  old  sociability,  but  it  is 
over  tea  and  around  the  samovar.  In  every  province 
of  Russia  there  has  been  an  astonishing  decrease  in 
crime,  in  the  breaking  of  heads,  in  immorality.  The 
papers  in  the  great  cities  continually  have  to  spare 
columns  in  their  war-filled  issues,  in  order  to  give  the 
facts  of  sobriety,  and  comment  on  them.  Russia  is 
greatly  pleased  with  herself  as  a  non-drinking  nation. 

The  great  question  is  :  Will  complete  prohibition  be 
feasible  after  the  war  is  over?  Will  not  the  warriors 
returning  from  victory  demand  drinks  to  toast  the 
Tsar  and  the  Allies  and  their  generals  ?  Will  there  be 
vodka  riots,  or  will  the  men  who  return  be  ready 
to  sacrifice  their  old  habits  for  the  national  ideal? 
I  am  inclined  to  think  that  it  will  be  the  latter.  The 
soldiers  will  almost  unanimously  approve  the  prohibi- 
tion. I  talked  to  several  soldiers  about  it.  One,  who 
was  attached  to  the  aviation  service,  attached  to  an 
officer  as  servant,  gives  me  an  example  of  what  the 
peasants  are  thinking.  He  had  bought  a  loaf  and  two 
herrings,  and,  eating  them  with  great  gusto,  exclaimed : 
"Ah  for  some  vodka  now." 


2IO  RUSSIA   AND    THE   WORLD 

"You'd  like  some,  eh?" 

"Lots  of  us  are  like  madmen  because  we  can't  get 
it." 

"Tell  me,  what  do  you  think  of  shutting  the  spirit 
shop  up?    Would  you  like  to  have  it  open  again?" 

"No,  I  wouldn't." 

"Why?" 

"Why!  Because  the  spirit  shop  is  our  enemy.  If 
you  have  a  quarter  in  your  pocket  and  the  door  of  the 
shop  is  open,  in  you  go.  You  don't  want  to  go,  but  if 
the  door's  open  you  can't  help  yourself.  If  you  know 
the  door's  open  in  a  village  five  miles  away  —  you  go 
there  and  buy  the  vodka.  And  what's  the  good  of  it 
after  all  ?  No,  brother,  we've  learned  something  in  this 
war.  I,  for  instance,  have  been  flying  in  the  air.  None 
of  our  village  have  ever  flown.  Who  would  have 
dreamed  of  me  going  up  among  the  clouds  and  the  stars 
like  a  Frenchman  or  an  Englishman  ?  There  you  see 
what  noble  allies  we  have.  They  don't  drink,  why 
should  we?" 

"Didn't  you  feel  frightened  going  up  so  high?" 
"Yes,  first  time  it  was  rather  dreadful,  but  that  was 
only  for  a  few  minutes.     It's  nothing  to  go  up  now." 
"Did  you  fly  over  the  enemy?" 
"Yes,  one  day  at  Novo-Georgievsk  we  set  out  to 
learn  what  way  the  Germans  were  moving  towards 
Warsaw,  and  we  flew  over  them.     Lord!  how  little 
those  Germans  looked,  but  they  all  began  to  fire  at 


THE   VODKA   PROHIBITION  211 

us,  with  rifles  and  field  guns,  and  cannon,  and,  as  one 
or  two  bullets  went  through  our  sails,  we  went  higher, 
and  turned  away  and  came  back  home." 

''Didn't  you  feel  afraid?" 

"Not  a  little  bit." 

"What  are  you  going  to  do  now?" 

"I  am  being  sent  to  escort  a  new  aeroplane  to  the 
front." 

"And  you  can  get  on  without  vodka?" 

"Yes,  long  as  I  have  my  wife  with  me." 

"What  do  you  mean  —  your  wife?" 

"Yes,  my  wife  goes  everywhere  with  me  now.  When 
I  lie  down  at  night  she  is  there  beside  me,  and  when  I 
waken  up  in  the  morning  there  she  is  still."  He  pointed 
to  his  rifle  and  smiled. 

I  might  give  many  talks,  and  as  far  as  they  touched 
on  the  vodka  question  there  was  always  the  same  senti- 
ment —  though  the  soldiers  would  give  anything  for  a 
drink,  yet  they  are  glad  that  it  is  impossible  to  get  it. 

StiU,  it  is  certain  that,  if  the  peasant  is  deprived  of 
his  vodka,  and  that  means  of  drowning  his  sorrows  and 
escaping  from  his  ennui,  something  must  be  done  to 
make  up  for  the  loss.  Especially  in  the  industrial 
villages,  holidays  without  vodka  will  be  dreary  beyond 
words.  The  industrial  communities  must  be  given  a 
share  in  the  advantages  of  industriahsm.  The  people 
must  be  given  personal  ambition,  art,  hterature,  music. 
Instead  of  the  Tango,  the  performance  of  indecent 


212  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

farces  and  tinkling  operettas,  the  foreign  and  thought- 
confusing  cinema,  must  come  fundamental  education, 
good  libraries,  good  theatres,  music.  From  my  know- 
ledge of  the  Russian  peasantry,  I  know  nothing  that 
would  so  effectively  combat  drunkenness  and  hooligan- 
ism as  the  establishment  of  musical  societies  and  bands 
in  every  village  in  the  country.  The  Russians  are 
surely  the  most  musical  people  in  the  world.  At  village 
cinema  theatres,  where  before  or  after  the  shadow-show 
there  has  been  a  trio  or  quartet  with  guitars  or  bala- 
laikas, I  have  seen  drunken  peasants  stand  up  in  the 
front  row  and  try  to  make  long  declamations  to  the 
musicians,  .whilst  all  through  the  pictures  they  have 
sat  staring  into  vacancy  and  wondering  dimly  where 
they  were.  Music  awakens  the  best  soul  of  the  Rus- 
sian. When  he  is  dead  drunk  he  will  raise  his  ear  to  a 
song. 

If  Russia  is  going  to  be  truly  strong  in  this  matter  she 
has  got  to  raise  a  new  generation  who  not  only  deny 
vodka,  but  who  would  not  enter  the  vodka  shop  even 
if  the  door  were  open.  But,  whatever  happens,  tem- 
perate Russia  will  have  a  great  deal  more  driving  power, 
will  be  more  ambitious,  and  more  able  to  get  what  it 
wants  in  the  world  than  dear  melancholy  drunken 
Russia. 


II 

Distrust  of  Russia   or  Friendship  with  Russia 

It  is  very  strange,  but  many  of  those  who  in  public 
life  stand  first  of  all  for  peace  and  goodwill  have  yet  an 
inappeasable  malice  against  Russia.  When  war  broke 
out  a  number  of  the  Pacifists,  Mr.  Llewellyn  Williams 
among  them,  came  forward  honourably  and  said: 
We  did  not  see  that  Germany  was  the  enemy,  did  not 
see  that  at  the  last  we  should  be  bound  to  fight  her, 
and  we  were  wrong.  England  is  proud  of  men  who  have 
the  courage  to  come  out  hke  Mr.  WilHams ;  such  men 
are  the  strength  of  England.  But  what  of  the  re- 
mainder of  the  Pacifist  party  —  it  was  thought  to  be 
dead.  It  became  stone-silent  for  awhile.  Russia  was 
feted :  Germany  was  cried  against.  We  went  forward 
in  our  might  to  shield  Belgium  and  France  from  the 
common  enemy.  We  seemed  to  fail  somewhat ;  Paris 
was  in  danger.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Russians  began 
to  go  ahead  in  East  Prussia,  they  took  town  after  town 
and  even  threatened  Berhn.  Germany  was  obliged 
to  give  the  Russian  invasion  her  serious  attention. 
It  was  the  general  opinion  that  the  Russian  onslaught 
saved  Paris  and  made  possible  for  French  and  English 

213 


214  RUSSIA  AND    THE   WORLD 

the  great  victory  of  the  Marne.    No  one  in  England 
dare  attack  Russia,  even  in  a  veiled  way. 

Then  Germany,  realising  that  the  three  Powers, 
England,  France  and  Russia,  were  too  strong  for  her, 
sought  by  cunning  to  separate  them.  A  rumour  was  set 
abroad  that  Russia  was  about  to  make  a  secret  peace, 
that  the  Tsar  when  he  went  to  Ossovets  really  went 
to  try  to  arrange  a  pact  with  the  Germans.  During 
the  black  days  of  Warsaw  it  was  whispered  that  Russia 
had  sold  Warsaw  to  the  Germans.  When  the  Germans 
were  driven  back  to  Mlava  and  Neidenburg  and  Thorn 
it  was  rumoured  that  Germany  had  agreed  to  evacuate 
•Poland  and  then  discuss  terms  of  secret  peace.  During 
all  the  sanguinary  struggle  in  Poland  that  ensued  it 
has  been  hinted  that  Russia  was  only  playing  at  fight- 
ing. Fortunately,  the  English  Censor  recognised  that 
this  was  German  propaganda  designed  to  bring  about 
distrust  between  England  and  Russia.  Nine-tenths 
of  the  journalists  in  Russia,  not  knowing  the  Russian 
language  or  having  any  intimate  realisation  of  Russian 
character,  swallowed  the  interesting  stories  and  wrote 
them  to  London  and  to  New  York.  They  put  them 
in  their  journalistic  correspondence,  they  put  them  in 
their  letters.  Some,  of  course,  got  through.  And  they 
brought  to  speech  and  to  life  the  Russophobe  and 
Pacifist  party  whom  everyone  thought  to  be  dead. 

It  was  said  that  Russia  did  not  intend  to  redeem  her 
promise  to  Poland,  that  she  was  getting  swelled  head 


DISTRUST   OF   RUSSIA  215 

through  her  victories,  that  she  was  capable  of  selling 
the  liberties  of  Europe.  Most  insidiously  of  all,  it  was 
hinted  that,  when  we  had  humbled  Germany,  we 
should  have  to  turn  our  attention  to  Russia.  It  was 
Russia's  turn  next  to  be  isolated  and  humbled. 

A  reasonable  person  necessarily  asked  :  Might  it  not 
possibly  turn  out  to  be  England's  turn  to  be  isolated 
and  humbled?  When  has  England  shown  herself  so 
capable  a  diplomatist,  or  Russia  so  poor  a  diplomatist, 
that  it  should  be  possible  to  isolate  Russia  ? 

Bernard  Shaw,  who  for  fifteen  years  has  had  more 
than  anyone  else  the  ear  of  the  British  public,  and  has 
been  trying  to  educate  the  British  public,  and  give  to  it 
his  own  point  of  view,  did  a  great  deal  to  ferment  dis- 
trust of  Russia  by  a  pamphlet  which  the  Censor  might 
justifiably  have  emended.  Had  a  journal  in  Russia 
dared  to  print  similar  animadversions  upon  England 
and  the  Allies,  it  would  have  been  confiscated,  and  the 
editor  brought  into  court  and  fined.  According  to 
Mr.  Shaw :  — 

"Russia  has  been  able  to  set  all  three  Western  friends 
and  neighbours,  Germany,  France,  and  England, 
shedding  rivers  of  blood  from  one  another's  throats." 

"The  Russian  Government  is  the  open  enemy  of 
every  liberty  we  boast  of. 

"Under  Russian  government,  people  whose  worst 
crime  is  to  find  the  Daily  News  a  congenial  newspaper 
are  hanged,  flogged,  or  sent  to  Siberia  as  a  matter  of 


2i6  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

daily  routine."  This,  Mr.  Shaw,  who  pride  yourself  on 
being  normal,  is  an  absurd  lie,  but  a  hateful  lie,  seeing 
that  it  is  intended  for  the  ears  of  those  who  are  wont  not 
to  think  for  themselves.  The  Russkia  Vedimosti  and 
the  Retch  are  journals  of  a  much  more  irreconcilable  type 
than  the  Daily  News ;  but  who  has  ever  been  flogged 
or  hanged  or  even  fined  for  reading  them  ? 

"Russia  has  been  welcome  to  flog  and  hang  her  H.  G. 
Wells's  and  Lloyd  Georges  by  the  dozen  without  a 
word  of  remonstrance  from  our  plutocratic  Press." 
Not  one  of  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells's  books,  all  of  which  are 
translated,  has  been  stopped  in  Russia.  She  would 
probably  have  flogged  Mr.  Shaw  in  his  youth  —  it  is 
now  too  late  a  week. 

"My  heart,"  says  G.  B.  S.,  "is  with  the  Moscow 
Art  Theatre."  I  had  thought  it  was  rather  with  some 
Vienna  or  Berlin  theatre,  where  his  works  are  usually 
produced  before  they  are  produced  in  England.  As  to 
the  Art  Theatre  at  Moscow,  it  produced  one  play  of 
Shaw's  long  ago  as  an  experiment  —  Casar  and  Cleo- 
patra. But  for  the  last  ten  years  he  has  not  written  a 
play  that  had  any  interest  to  the  Moscow  Theatre  of 
Art. 

"My  heart  is  with  the  Russia  of  Tolstoy,  and  Turge- 
nieff,  and  Dost oieff sky,  and  Gorky,  and  Tchekof." 
How  Mr.  Shaw's  intellect  has  been  at  variance  with 
his  heart  then!  His  heart  is  with  Dostoieffsky.  Dos- 
toieffsky's  heart  was  a  large  one  —  it  sheltered  Ras- 


DISTRUST   OF   RUSSIA  217 

kolnikof  and  Ivan  Karamazof  and  even  Smerdyakof. 
It  sheltered,  however,  no  Germans. 

"When  we  fight  the  Tsar  we  are  fighting  not  for 
Tolstoy  and  Gorky  (strange  couple),  but  for  the  forces 

that  Tolstoy  thundered  against  all  his  life " And 

when  the  Tsar  is  fighting  for  us,  Mr.  Shaw  ? 

"I  know  all  our  disinterested  and  thoughtful  sup- 
porters of  the  war  feel  deeply  uneasy  about  the  Russian 
alHance."     The  wish  is  father  to  the  thought. 

"Until  Russia  becomes  a  federation  of  several  sepa- 
rate democratic  states,  and  the  Tsar  is  either  promoted 
to  the  honourable  position  of  hereditary  President  or 
else  totally  abolished,  the  Eastern  boundary  of  the 
League  of  Peace  must  be  the  Eastern  boundary  of 
Swedish,  German  and  Italian  civilisation."  In  other 
words,  a  league  of  peace,  i.e.  an  alliance,  must  be 
formed  between  England  and  Germany  and  the  rest 
after  the  war,  but  Russia  must  be  dropped,  Russia 
must  be  isolated,  and,  if  necessary,  fought  by  the 
League  of  Peace. 

"A  victory  unattainable  without  Russian  aid  would 
be  a  defeat  for  Western  European  Liberalism."  To 
this  I  say  —  let  Liberals  speak  for  themselves.  Mr. 
Shaw  is  a  SociaHst  —  the  very  opposite  of  a  Liberal. 
For  the  rest,  I  would  ask  those  who  agree  with  Mr. 
Shaw,  which  would  be  the  greater  defeat,  this  so-called 
moral  defeat  or  the  actual  defeat  which  would  have 
taken  place  if  the  three  Emperors  had  been  in  alliance 


2i8  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

—  Germany,  Russia,  and  Austria,  against  England 
and  France  ? 

"Our  allies  of  to-day  may  be  our  enemies  of  to- 
morrow." 

Many  Russians  reading  these  opinions  will  think  that 
Mr.  Shaw  may  have  been  bought  by  the  Germans  to 
write  them.  They  are  wrong.  These  are  Shaw's 
actual  thoughts,  inspired  by  his  vanity  and  his  hate 
of  religion.  On  the  other  hand,  many  Russians  will 
think  that  Shaw's  opinion  is  representative  of  British 
opinion,  and  they  will  conclude  that  we  are  not  true 
friends  of  Russia,  that  we  are  ready  to  betray  her  the 
moment  our  own  security  is  achieved.  The  pamphlet 
should  have  been  stopped.  Its  immediate  effect  is  to 
strengthen  the  hand  of  the  German  party  at  the 
Russian  court  and  to  put  us  in  danger  of  having  to 
fight,  not  only  Germany  and  Austria  which  are  already 
as  much  as  we  can  manage,  but  Russia  as  well.  Such 
a  pamphlet  as  Mr.  Shaw's  is  a  blow  to  Russian  freedom, 
Russian  hope,  in  fact  to  the  very  forces  in  Russia  with 
whom  Mr.  Shaw  alleges  his  heart  is  to  be  found. 

Everything  is  to  be  gained  by  being  generous  to 
Russia,  by  knowing  her  and  loving  her,  and  conse- 
quently trusting  her  utterly.  What  men  like  Shaw 
and  the  haters  of  Russia  tried  to  spread  is  ignorance 
of  Russia.  True  knowledge  of  Russia  means  love 
towards  her,  tenderness,  generosity.  The  truly  reli- 
gious heart  of  England  looks  to  find  strength,  spiritual 


DISTRUST   OF   RUSSIA  219 

food,  inspiration,  and  when  it  comes  to  Russia  it  finds 
it.  Socialists  of  the  Shaw  type  have  a  great  maUce 
against  rehgion.  All  materiahsts  and  humanitarians 
see  in  Russia  the  enemy.  Hence  the  lies  about  her 
flogging  her  H.  G.  Wells's.  Hence  the  insistence  on 
the  persecution  of  the  Jews.  Some  of  these  pacifist 
people,  so  full  of  peace  and  goodwill  when  the  cost  of 
armaments  is  under  discussion,  yet  fan  every  little 
flame  of  hate  against  Russia,  and  one  might  imagine 
that  if  the  httle  flame  led  to  a  conflagration  of  war 
between  us  and  Russia  they  would  be  in  the  front 
rank  of  rejoicers.  Not  they!  They  would  slink  off 
and  let  the  ignorant  masses  whom  they  had  gulled 
shout  the  cheers  for  war. 

Thanks  to  the  Enghsh  friends  of  Russia  and  the 
Russian  friends  of  England  we  are  fighting  on  one  side 
to-day  for  a  common  end.  And  Russia  is  our  staunch 
friend.  She  enables  us  to  defeat  the  Germans.  Those 
who  are  whispering  treason  against  Russia  are  those 
who  in  time  of  peace  did  everything  to  weaken  us. 
They  were  poisoning  our  youth  and  spoiling  our  women 
with  indecent  novels  and  plays;  they  were  turning 
our  national  attention  exclusively  upon  the  mentally 
deficient,  the  aged,  the  slum-dwellers ;  they  were  doing 
their  best  to  stop  the  growth  of  the  Navy  and  to  under- 
mine the  loyalty  of  the  Army.  They  were  discouraging 
Imperial  unity  and  Colonial  friendship.  They  have 
done  their  best  to  damage  Anglo-Russian  friendship, 


220  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

collecting  the  riff-raff  of  German  Jews  and  Russian 
subjects  fled  from  Russian  justice,  some  of  them 
poHtical  idealists  and  honourable  peace-loving  citi- 
zens, but  many  drawn  from  the  criminal  class  of  the 
East  end,*  to  protest  in  the  name  of  England  against 
Russian  domestic  and  Imperial  policy. 

There  is  room  for  Hberal  thought  about  Russia. 
True  Liberals  are  most  precious  to  us.  We  need  to  be 
reminded  of  the  rights  of  small  nations  to  fulfil  their 
national  destinies,  and  not  be  absorbed  into  large 
empires.  Behold,  Liberals  have  the  ear  of  Russia! 
It  is  a  Liberal  Government  that  represents  England 
in  the  Anglo-Russian  friendship.  Liberals  have  in- 
estimable power  to  help  Russia  —  by  loving  her,  not 
by  criticising  and  attacking  her.  I  would  say  to 
Liberals— Read  Dostoieffsky,  and  Tchekof,  and  Kou- 
prin,  and  Gorky  and  Sologub,  read  my  own  story  of 
the  Russian  pilgrims ;  go  to  Russia,  talk  to  Russians, 
but  do  not  read  Shaw  on  Russia,  or  even  Wells  on 
Russia,  and  do  not  go  to  Jews  and  talk  to  them  of 
Russia.  By  the  negative  side,  even  if  it  be  a  true 
negative  side,  you  cannot  know  Russia.  There  is 
something  stronger  than  nagaikas  and  pogroms  that 
keeps  the  Tsardom  together  —  the  Tsardom  that 
survived  the  terrible  Japanese  War  and  was  still  strong 

*  A  great  deal  of  East-end  crime,  such  as  the  Tottenham  outrages,  the 
Hounsditch  murders,  the  Stinie  Morrison  (alias  Stein)  affair,  have  been 
associated  with  Russian  subjects,  not  with  pure  Russians,  it  is  true,  but 
with  members  of  Russia's  subject  races. 


DISTRUST   OF   RUSSIA  221 

enough  to  overcome  the  greatest  revolutionary  move- 
ment of  modern  times.  Knowing  Russia,  you  will 
find  a  common  ground.  Knowing  and  loving  Russia, 
spiritual  forces  will  flow  into  your  life  and  your  destiny. 
Russia  known  and  loved  by  you  will  profit  by  your 
long  Western  experience,  your  trained  hand  and 
practical  intelHgence.  All  Liberals  who  are  true 
Liberals,  and  wish  from  their  hearts  the  welfare  of 
small  nations  and  of  individuals,  and  who  would  always 
safeguard  to  these  the  opportunity  to  fulfil  their 
national  and  individual  destiny,  should  take  these 
words  to  heart.  In  the  case  of  nations  and  individuals 
affected  by  the  government  of  Russia  you  can  help 
them  most  by  loving  and  trusting  Russia ;  you  do  not 
help  them  at  all,  on  the  contrary  you  frustrate  them, 
by  remaining  ignorant  of  mighty  Russia,  attacking  her, 
threatening  her. 

As  it  is  among  individual  friends,  so  it  is  among 
national  friends.  If  you  love  Russia  she  will  love  you 
in  return ;  if  you  are  generous  to  her  she  will  never  be 
outdone  in  generosity. 

"The  song  is  to  the  singer,  and  comes  back  most  to  him, 
The  gift  is  to  the  giver,  and  comes  back  most  to  him, 
The  love  is  to  the  lover,  and  comes  back  most  to  him, 

—  it  cannot  fail." 


Ill 

The  Settlement  of  Peace 

We  are  at  war  with  Germany,  and,  for  the  time 
being,  with  the  German  Idea.  We  are  at  war  with 
German  ruthlessness,  with  that  barbarism  that  does 
not  stay  the  German  as  he  rushes  rough-shod  over 
other  nations'  holy  ground.  We  are  at  war  with 
Germany's  disregard  for  other  people's  feehngs,  with 
Germany's  wish  to  Germanise  territory  and  nations 
that  have  no  sympathy  with  Germany  or  German 
culture.  Consequently,  when  the  war  closes  with 
victory  over  Germany  we  must  hope  that  it  will  close 
with  victory  over  the  German  idea  also.  Peace,  when 
we  make  it,  should  be  peace  over  the  ruins  of  Germany ; 
it  should  also  be  peace  over  the  beaten  and  frustrated 
German  idea.  Let  us  be  on  our  guard  lest  though 
we  beat  Germany  the  German  idea  gain  the  better 
over  us,  win  our  sympathy  and  enter  into  alliance 
with  our  thoughts.  We  fight  Uke  Enghshmen,  let 
us  make  peace  like  Englishmen. 

At  least,  let  us  not  make  for  ourselves  the  sort  of 
peace  that  Germans  would  have  made  for  themselves 
had  they  won. 


THE   SETTLEMENT  OF  PEACE         223 

Our  true  peace  as  Englishmen,  Frenchmen  and 
Russians  should  be  a  peace  founded  on  a  love  of  dif- 
ferences and  a  reverence  for  distinguishing  marks. 
In  difference  we  see  a  divine  manifestation  of  the  God 
who  makes  both  the  daisy  and  the  rose,  and  the  tiger 
and  the  mouse,  and  the  eagle  and  the  mole,  each 
perfection  of  its  kind.  Difference  is  God's  beauty  and 
the  sign  of  His  creative  fingers.  It  is  difference  that 
thrills  us  towards  life  —  similarity  and  monotony  that 
cause  us  to  become  dull  and  to  die.  Tacitus  wrote  of  a 
conqueror  that  he  made  a  desert  and  called  it  peace  — 
that  was  a  German  peace.  We  will  not  make  a  silence 
and  call  it  peace,  or  a  great  collective  State,  or  an 
Empire  over  enslaved  nations,  but  instead,  we  will  make 
a  singing,  and  give  land  and  freedom  to  small  nations 
and  let  them  hve  under  their  own  little  flags  and  speak 
their  own  language  and  chant  the  poems  of  their  own 
song-books.  Poles  shall  be  Poles  and  shall  not  call 
themselves  Russians,  Jews  shall  call  themselves  Jews 
and  not  Russians  or  Germans  or  EngHsh.  They  can 
call  themselves  Americans,  but  then  America  is  a  nation 
in  synthesis.  America  is  the  melting-pot  where  pure 
types  are  lost  in  order  that  a  new  type  may  be  brought 
forth.  Finns  shall  be  Finns  and  shall  reahse  them- 
selves in  Finland.  The  Slavs  shall  escape  from  the 
Austrian  yoke  but  shall  not  thereby  fall  under  the 
yoke  of  the  Great  Russians.  The  Belgians  shall  be 
set  on  their  feet  once  more.     Alsace  shall  be  free  to  be 


224  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

French.  Power  to  change  nationaHty  shall  be  with- 
held. No  Germans,  Russians,  Jews,  Poles,  and  so 
forth,  shall  be  allowed  to  masquerade  as  British  under 
legal  recognisance  of  a  change  of  nationality.  Ireland 
and  Ulster  shall  both  be  free. 

International  understanding  is  often  very  like  matri- 
monial understanding.  It  occurs  that  those  people 
who  rush  to  marriage  with  the  joy  of  feeling  themselves 
alike  in  every  way,  find  afterwards  that  there  are 
many  dissimilarities,  and  one  tries  to  enslave  the 
other's  personality,  or  there  is  an  open  rupture.  The 
understanding  that  is  best  founded  and  is  hkely  to 
last  longest  is  that  which  is  founded  on  a  love  of  the 
differences  in  the  two  personalities. 

There  is  a  remarkable  assumption  in  modern  writers, 
especially  in  Socialist  writers,  that  all  nations  are  in 
themselves  much  of  a  muchness,  alike  in  ideals,  in 
temperament,  and  in  possibility.  According  to  these 
it  is  only  the  waywardness  of  certain  Governments, 
like  the  British  Government  or  the  Russian  Govern- 
ment, that  stands  in  the  path  towards  uniformity. 
They  see  ahead  one  language,  one  State  for  the  whole 
of  the  world.  That  is  the  Sociahst  ideal.  Those 
who  have  read  ''The  World  Set  Free"  may  remember 
how  every  character  in  the  story,  however  foreign 
his  name,  is  still  in  temperament  an  Englishman. 
Little  stock  is  taken  of  the  wonderful  differences  which 
separate  as  yet  all  the  nations  of  Europe ;   the  differ- 


THE   SETTLEMENT   OF   PEACE  225 

ences  in  instinct,  the  necessary  differences  in  destiny 
and  in  expression.  The  Socialist  World- State  is  formed, 
and  there  is  seemingly  no  rebellion  against  its  uniformi- 
ties. All  use  of  weapons  and  of  war  is  reserved  to  the 
police,  who  suppress  at  once  any  rebellion  against 
the  service  of  the  World-State.  To  quote  Bernard 
Shaw,  who  is  one  of  the  leaders  of  the  Socialists  in 
England : 

"You  will  reserve  your  shrapnel  for  the  wasters 
who  shirk  their  share  of  the  industrial  service  of  their 
country ; "  or  again, 

"I  hold  no  brief  for  small  States  as  such.  We  are 
in  no  way  bound  to  knight-errantry  on  their  behalf 
against  big  ones." 

Liberals  live  on  friendly  terms  with  Socialists.  But 
in  this  great  hour  of  testing  they  will  probably  try 
many  opinions  of  their  Socialist  acquaintances  and 
find  them  in  opposition  to  true  Liberalism  —  true 
LiberaKsm  being  respect  for  the  differences  in  individ- 
uals and,  in  nations,  respect  for  the  rights  of  individ- 
uals to  follow  out  as  they  wish  their  God-given  destiny ; 
respect  for  the  rights  of  small  nations  to  follow  out  as 
they  will  their  destiny  also. 

In  this  war,  that  is  during  the  fighting  of  it.  Con- 
servatives and  Liberals  alike  in  Russia  and  in  Great 
Britain  have  found  a  common  ground.  That  common 
ground  will  avail  them  as  advantageously  in  the  settle- 
ment of  peace  after  the  war  is  over. 

Q 


226  RUSSIA  AND   THE   WORLD 

If  each  individual  will  work  out  his  political  creed 
and  see  where  he  stands,  and  how  he  personally  would 
like  to  settle  the  war,  I  feel  sure  that  a  great  niunber 
who  rather  lightly  give  their  support  to  the  ideas  of  the 
hour  will  find  that  these  ideas  which  I  formulate  are 
their  own  ideas,  they  will  find  under  their  feet  a  solid 
rock  of  personal  conviction. 

As  regards  the  literal  fact  of  the  settlement  of  peace, 
it  is  greatly  more  important  to  indicate  the  broad  prin- 
ciples than  to  give  them  out  with  detail.  The  redis- 
tribution of  Europe  is  a  great  and  difficult  task.  It  will 
need  much  delicate  intelHgence  to  demarcate  the  new 
boundary  lines,  to  know  how  "to  take  occasion  by  the 
hand,"  to  know  what  functions  may  be  given  to  each 
young  State,  to  safeguard  against  immediate  jealousy 
and  resumption  of  war  on  a  petty  scale.  When  the 
war  is  over  it  will  probably  be  better  for  each  and  all 
of  us  that  it  be  really  over  for  a  while.  We  British 
at  least  will  try  to  give  the  world  a  clean  slate  and 
start  the  nations  without  any  debts  or  grudges  —  all 
trespasses  forgiven. 

The  most  honourable  terms  of  peace  would  be  per- 
haps the  following :  — 

Germany  give   to   Belgium   Aix-la-Chapelle   and 

Cologne,  and  also  sufficient   of   a  war  indemnity 

to  start  her  on  her  feet  again. 

Britain   ask   no   return   of   the   money   she   has 

given  to  Belgium,  Russia  and   France,  or  of  the 

money  she  has  herself  spent  on  the  fighting. 


THE    SETTLEMENT   OF   PEACE  227 

Part  of  German  Poland  —  not  all,  for  that  would 
mean  coming  within  fifty  miles  of  Berlin  —  be  added 
to  the  whole  of  Austrian  and  Russian  Poland,  and  a 
Russian  protectorate  or  Polish  independent  king- 
dom be  established. 

Russia's  right  of  entry  into  the  Mediterranean  be 
established;  Constantinople  be  put  under  Russian 
protection,  and  the  Cathedral  of  St.  Sophia  given  to 
the  Russian  Orthodox  Church ;  St.  Sophia's  become 
the  St.  Peter's  of  the  Eastern  Orthodox  Church  —  one 
arm  being  the  Patriarchates  of  Jerusalem  and  Con- 
stantinople, the  other  the  Patriarchate  of  Moscow. 

Alsace-Lorraine  be  given  back  to  the  French. 

The  Jews  be  put  at  liberty  to  form  a  Jewish  Gov- 
ernment in  Palestine,  and  Jews  all  the  world  over 
be  given  the  option  of  becoming  Jewish  subjects. 

The  German  Fleet  be  taken  over  by  her  present 
foes  and  divided  between  them  in  lieu  of  war  indem- 
nity —  so  safeguarding  German  science  and  research 
and  culture  from  entire  suffocation.  We  need  Ger- 
many shining  in  the  new  Europe.  Germany  extin- 
guished would  be  a  terrible  blow. 

Japan  have  a  protectorate  over  Tsing-Tau  and  be 
guaranteed  from  European  molestation  in  China  and 
the  Pacific.  x^/ 

German  African  colonies  be  restored  to  Germany.'  > 
Most  of  these  terms  can  be  obtained  if  the  Allies 
co-operate  in  a  friendly  spirit,  seeing  one  another's 


228  RUSSIA  AND   THE   WORLD 

difficulties  and  helping  where  they  can,  always  remem- 
bering that  it  is  a  big  thing  they  are  planning  and 
shaping,  and  not  in  any  sense  a  personal  or  mean  one. 

Russia  is  distrusted  by  many  —  but  if  we  know 
Russia,  understand  her,  love  her,  Russia  will  know 
us  and  recognise  our  love.  She  will  be  quite  easily 
amenable.  She  wishes  a  good  settlement  as  sincerely 
as  we  do,  but  she  is  not  going  to  be  left  behind  if  we 
or  the  French  are  going  to  be  selfish  and  seek  our  own 
ends. 

We  ought  to  remember  that  commerce  is  a  second- 
ary consideration.  If  we  get  the  right  national  peace, 
(commerce  will  take  care  of  itself. 
•  1  And  peace  is  not  a  primary  consideration  either. 
War  will  break  out  again  —  that  is  in  the  nature  of  the 
world.  We  must  not  be  afraid  of  that.  War  has 
helped  us  back  to  reahty  now  —  it  will  help  us  or 
others  again  when  necessary.  Be  sure  at  least  we  are 
not  settHng  peace  on  national  lines  in  order  that  there 
may  never  again  be  war.  We  are  going  to  settle  it 
on  national  lines  because  we  feel  that  it  is  good  to  do 
so.  As  God  made  each  new  different  Hving  thing  in 
the  world  and  saw  that  it  was  good,  so  we  shall  save  or 
resuscitate  nationalities  because  it  is  fit  to  do  so  and 
will  be  good,  being  done.  In  fact,  war  becomes  more 
likely  the  more  little  States  there  are.  In  a  world 
of  thousands  of  small  States  there  is  always  a  war  going 
on  somewhere  —  in  a  world  composed  of  two  or  three 


THE   S$:TTLEMENT  of   peace  229 

vast  Empires  tht;re  is  long  peace.  That  is  perhaps  a 
debatable  point,  but  the  other  point  is  not  really 
debatable  —  we  will  make  peace  on  national  lines 
because  it  is  just  and  fitting  to  do  so.  Our  primary 
reason  is  that  it  is  just,  and  that  reason  needs  no  help 
from  other  reasons. 


IV 

Arbitration 

The  signing  of  the  Russo-American  Convention 
was  received  with  acclamation  in  the  Russian  Press. 
"Henceforth  there  will  be  eternal  peace  between 
America  and  Russia,"  wrote  the  Editor  of  the  Russian 
Word.  "Let  us  hasten  to  conclude  similar  treaties 
with  other  powers  —  especially  with  Sweden  and 
Norway,  who  feel  so  much  in  danger  of  our  Imperial 
arm."  I  read  in  another  Russian  paper  a  translation 
of  an  article  which  apparently  had  appeared  in  the 
American  Outlook.     It  was  quoted  with  approval :  — 

"The  time  is  coming  when  nations  will  become  so 
civihsed  that  they  will  not  settle  their  quarrels  by  fight- 
ing, but  will  go  together  to  an  impartial  international 
court  and  there  await  a  verdict. 

"Then,  in  such  a  case,  a  nation  like  Servia  would  be 
tried  on  the  accusation  of  Austria,  and  the  matter  un- 
ravelled and  blame  allotted  where  blame  is  due,  and  a 
guarantee  against  new  trouble  would  be  obtained. 

"The  world  will  look  back  with  astonishment  on 
the  barbarism  of  a  previous  age,  when  Austria  could 
fall  on  Servia  and  take  at  once  the  roles  of  judge,  prose- 
cutor, plaintiff,  jury,  and  executioner." 

230 


ARBITRATION  231 

"After  the  war,"  says  another  Liberal  paper  of 
Russia,  "we  shall  look  forward  to  a  lasting  peace 
throughout  the  world  and  the  establishment  even- 
tually of  the  federation  of  Europe  —  the  United  States 
of  Europe.  That  is  what  we  are  fighting  for  now  — 
Peace  and  Federation,  the  recognition  of  private  in- 
terests, but  also  the  subordinating  of  private  interests  to 
the  common  weal,  the  recognition  of  nationality,  but 
the  subordination  of  national  interest  to  European 
interest,  to  world  interest.  Such  a  trifling  matter,  as 
whether  Russian  Jews  who  have  gone  to  America  and 
have  been  naturalised  as  American  citizens  shall  be 
allowed  free  access  to  Orthodox  Russia,  would  not 
then  jeopardise  the  lives  of  tens  of  thousands  of  fighting 
men  in  America  and  Russia.  The  inherent  rightness  of 
Russia's  plea  would  then  be  made  evident  in  court 
and  the  question  would  be  closed." 

A  pleasant  and  a  broad  vista  was  disclosed  in  this 
article  and  one  that  would  win  a  great  deal  of  sympathy 
in  the  West.  The  war  affords,  no  doubt,  such  exalted 
points  of  view. 

Still,  though  I  have  stood  myself  and  looked  out  over 
the  new  spaces  of  time  and  possibility  revealed  by  the 
war,  I  do  not  see  the  world  so  smiling.  I  do  not  see 
it  so  happily  parcelled  out,  do  not  see  so  far.  I  see 
mists  and  darkness  between  nations,  rivers  of  blood 
between  them,  dark  clouds  of  resentment  overhanging 
some  of  them,  pride  and  prosperity  befooling  others. 


232  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

But  to  consider  the  fair  Western  vision  as  it  has  been 
described  —  What  of  diplomacy?  Many  aver  —  and 
among  them  he  who  most  of  all  has  a  passion  for 
shattering  the  world  to  bits  and  then  remoulding  it  — 

"nearer  to  the  heart's  desire" 

that  this  war  is  going  to  make  an  end  not  only  of  war 
itself,  but  of  the  diplomatists.  But  it  seems  to  me  that 
even  if  it  were  likely  that  wars  would  cease  that  very- 
fact  would  increase  the  number  of  diplomatists.  Di- 
plomacy is  the  way  of  arranging  difficulties  in  time  of 
peace.  Diplomacy  is  verbal  and  social  strategy.  One 
might  as  well  say  that  after  this  war  we  are  going  to  get 
rid  of  literary  agents,  lawyers,  cabinet  ministers,  match- 
making mothers  and  our  capable  selves.  We  are  all 
more  or  less  diplomatists.  Diplomacy  fills  the  time  of 
peace,  and  when  war  comes,  either  national  or  private, 
it  is  often  as  a  relief,  a  release  from  words,  poHteness, 
flattery,  deceit. 

Some  people  speak  of  arbitration  as  if  it  were  a  blessed 
dispensation  of  providence,  a  means  of  finding  Divine 
justice  and  equity.  But  as  a  matter  of  fact  the  process 
of  arbitration  —  diplomacy,  is  also  a  war  of  its  kind,  a 
struggle  between  astute  men  with  white  hands  and  silk 
hats,  a  deadly  struggle  for  the  furtherance  of  personal 
ends.  It  is  not  the  baaing  of  lambs  on  a  hillside. 
Nations  will  still  win  their  case  by  arbitration,  for  di- 
plomacy is  also  force.     Some  nations  are  strong  in 


ARBITRATION  233 

diplomatic  gifts  like  the  Jews  and  the  Russians,  others 
are  weak  like  the  Germans  and  the  British.  The  Rus- 
sians, for  instance,  are  so  gifted  that  despite  a  superficial 
aspect  of  frivolity  and  nervousness  they  may  always  be 
backed  to  come  out  well  from  diplomatic  struggles. 
No,  it  is  not  Britain's  role  to  trust  her  destiny  to-7>; 
conferences.  If  conferences  must  occasionally  be, 
let  them  be  few  and  simple.  Simple  national  demands 
enforced  by  national  power  and  national  moral  right 
are  what  we  must  make,  and  we  must  make  them 
direct.  If  wars  turn  up  occasionally  it  will  be  better  to . 
bleed  for  a  cause  and  an  ideal  than  to  be  slowly  bled' 
away  by  smiling  foes.  We  shall  not  need  to  fight  often 
if  we  show  ourselves  strong  and  generous  and  kind, 
if  we  assimie  the  good  side  of  the  world  and  let  our  flag 
stand  for  fairness,  honour,  good  sport,  good  life. 

The  verdict  of  arbitration  can  only  be  acceptable  as 
the  light  of  pure  reason,  and  it  cannot  be  a  pure  verdict 
as  long  as  the  representatives  of  the  nations  are  backed 
by  immense  armies  and  unlimited  wealth. 

When  the  fortunes  of  the  present  war  are  made  clear, 
the  party  that  knows  it  is  beaten  may  as  well  resign, 
and,  of  course,  pourparlers  of  peace  will  be  exchanged. 
When  some  basis  of  settlement  that  can  be  profitably 
discussed  is  found,  there  will  be  a  conference  between 
the  representatives  of  Germany,  Austria,  and  Turkey 
on  the  one  hand,  and  Britain,  France,  Russia,  Belgium, 
and  Japan  on  the  other.     The  scheme  for  belligerent 


234  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

Europe  and  Asia  will  then  be  put  forward  in  a  direct 
form.  The  broad  principle  of  settlement  will  be  in- 
dicated at  the  outset  —  that  is,  I  presume,  the  national 
principle  of  historical  territory  to  the  nations  to  which 
the  territory  nationally  and  historically  belongs. 

It  seems  to  me  there  will  be  no  need  to  ask  non- 
belligerents  to  vote  upon  the  matter.  America,  Italy, 
Sweden,  Holland  may  want  fingers  in  the  pie.  America 
especially,  as  the  only  first-class  power  not  fighting, 
may  be  expected  to  claim  the  right  to  be  a  party  in  an 
arbitration  conference. 

But,  I  am  told,  America  won't  be  asked  to  meddle  in 
it.  The  answer  to  that  is :  —  Germany  will  ask  that 
America's  ofiices  be  called  in.  Germany  has  had  an 
eye  to  that  from  the  beginning,  and  has  spent  an  im- 
mense amount  of  money  in  order  to  obtain  an  unfair 
advantage  through  America's  partiality.  She  has 
not  failed  in  her  propaganda  in  America.  It  is  even 
part  of  German-American  policy  to  make  England  think 
that  she  has  failed,  and  that  the  whole  of  America  is 
hilariously  on  the  side  of  the  Allies.  We  could  not  in 
honour  accept  the  arbitrament  of  a  nation  that  claims 
its  right  to  arbitrate  because  it  is  on  our  side.  We 
cannot  accept  the  arbitrament  of  a  nation  that  gives 
hospitality  to  the  paid  agents  and  propagandists  of 
the  other  side. 

But  Germany  will  put  her  up  as  a  necessary  im- 
partial voice  in  the  conference  after  the  war.     But  let 


ARBITRATION  235 

the  Allied  nations  make  up  their  minds  to  it  now  — 
those  who  have  fought  and  those  only  shall  decide  the 
terms  of  peace;  those  who  have  not  fought  may 
formulate  recommendations  and  send  them  to  the  con- 
ference, but  they  shall  have  no  casting  vote  —  no  vote, 
in  fact,  at  all  —  in  the  deHberations. 


V 

The  Future  of  the  Russian  Empire 

When  the  war  is  over  and  Germany  is  laid  low, 
two  Empires  will  stand  facing  one  another,  a  land 
Empire  and  a  sea  Empire,  two  Empires  and  two 
peoples,  the  Russian  and  the  British.  The  spectre  of 
the  German  in'  complete  armour  has  depressed  us 
both,  and  caused  us  to  think  little  of  ourselves.  But 
with  the  disappearance  of  the  spectre  we  look  at  one 
another  and  see  ourselves  as  we  really  are. 

Even  as  the  war  goes  on  the  greatness  of  Russia  be- 
comes more  and  more  apparent,  as  if  a  mist  were  lifting 
off  great  mountains.  Russia  is  emerging,  and  she 
looks  so  vast  that  it  tires  the  eyes  to  look  over  her. 

We  see  her  plains  and  her  forests  and  her  mountains, 
her  ploughed  fields,  trackless  woods,  great  hills,  the 
majestic  Caucasus  with  its  long  line  of  everlasting 
snow,  the  pretty  birch-covered  Urals  agleam  with 
precious  rocks.  We  follow  her  great  and  tranquil 
rivers,  the  Volga  flowing  south,  the  melancholy  Pet- 
chora,  Dwina,  Obi,  Yenisei,  Lena  flowing  through 
forests  to  the  Arctic.  We  see  the  lakes  and  inland 
seas  that  she  encloses.     We  see  the  endless  steppe 

236 


FUTURE   OF  THE  RUSSIAN   EMPIRE     237 

awave  with  boisterous  prairie  grass,  and  we  look  over 
the  vast  Central  Asian  background  of  salt  deserts 
gleaming  with  crystal,  of  the  irrigated  yellow  fields 
of  Turkestan  and  Seven  Rivers  away  to  the  Mon- 
goHan  trade  routes,  where  the  wealth  of  China  issues 
forth  in  caravans  of  thousands  of  camels,  away  to  the 
Great  White  Ones,  the  Altai  mountains,  the  backbone 
of  Asia,  we  look  along  the  wild  Chinese  marches  where 
the  Siberian  rivers  rise,  where  hundreds  of  miles  are 
common  as  leagues  in  other  continents,  away  to  the 
far  Pacific.  Or  northward  the  eye  ranges  over  Siberia, 
and  the  great  Northern  Empire  becomes  visible,  fring- 
ing in  ice  and  snow  a  third  of  the  way  round  the  Pole. 

On  this  wild  world  of  the  Russians  live  all  manner  of 
tribes  —  Russians,  Poles,  Jews,  Finns,  Georgians,  Os- 
setines,  Cherkesses,  Kirghiz,  Kalmouks,  Shamans, 
Dunkans,  Turkomen,  Sarts,  Afghans,  Tartars,  Ostiaks, 
Yakuts,  Zirians,  Samoyedes,  an  innumerable  diversity, 
various  in  rehgion  and  tongue  and  dress.  And  one 
of  the  most  remarkable  and  least  remarked  facts  about 
all  these  tribes  is  that  they  are  distinct.  They  do  not 
intermarry,  they  preserve  their  own  tongue  and  their 
own  religion.  They  live  as  they  please.  In  Russia 
the  races  are  purer  than  in  any  other  land  in  Europe. 
The  Russians  themselves  are  a  remarkably  pure  type. 
Russianisation  scarcely  ever  means  the  forcing  of 
tribes  to  take  on  the  semblance  of  Russians  —  it  means 
occasionally  the  forcing  of  other  races  to  obey  laws 


238  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

they  do  not  want,  or  it  means,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
Kirghiz  and  Kalmouks,  the  loss  of  traditional  pasture 
grounds  given  to  new-come  Russian  settlers,  but  it 
means  nothing  so  deadly  or  systematic  as  Prussianisa- 
tion.  Under  the  crust  of  bureaucratic  or  absolute 
rule  there  is  in  Russia  a  remarkable  freedom,  even  a 
spirit  of  Liberalism.  Thus,  the  Tsar  has  several 
millions  of  peaceful  Mohammedan  subjects,  and  they 
are  never  interfered  with  even  by  missionaries  —  the 
Government  even  grants  them  facihties  for  making 
the  pilgrimage  to  Mecca,  and  treats  them  more  as  if 
they  were  a  branch  of  their  own  Church.  There  is 
freedom  of  religion  in  Russia,  and  Baptists  and  Evan- 
gelicals are  putting  up  new  chapels  in  every  city. 
Even  the  Skoptsi,  the  celibate  sect  that  believes  that 
mankind,  by  having  no  children,  should  come  to  an 
end,  are  allowed  to  flourish,  and  nearly  all  the  shops 
in  one  street  in  Moscow  are  kept  by  them.  In  Russia 
each  caste  is  distinctive :  you  do  not  need  to  ask  a 
man  whether  he  is  a  peasant  or  a  workman  or  a  Tartar 
or  a  Jew  or  a  Caucasian  tribesman  or  a  Kirghiz.  It 
is  at  once  obvious  by  his  distinctive  dress. 

But  Russia's  greatness  lies  not  in  her  government, 
nor  in  her  national  efficiency,  nor  in  the  army  she  can 
bring  forward,  nor  in  the  inexhaustible  resources  of 
her  country,  but  in  her  people,  in  her  great  strong 
human  family,  in  her  deep  roots,  her  widespread 
national  life,  her  big  religious  men  and  women,  and  the 


FUTURE   OF   THE   RUSSIAN   EMPIRE     239 

plenty  of  space  they  have  in  which  to  live.  The 
Russian  people  has  racial  youth,  nerve,  and  destiny; 
nothing  can  effectually  stand  in  its  way. 


As  I  have  lately  wandered  across  Russian  Central 
Asia,  from  the  Caspian  Sea  to  the  frontiers  of  Siberia 
and  MongoHa,  all  that  vast  territory  which  is  printed 
yellow  on  our  maps  and  marked  with  vaguely  wan- 
dering caterpillars  for  mountains  and  troubled  worms 
and  millepedes  for  rivers,  I  have  a  very  clear  picture 
of  one  of  the  youngest  colonies  of  the  Russian  Empire. 

It  has  become  very  real  to  me.  It  is  up-to-date  in 
my  mind.  When  I  make  my  map  of  the  country  I  shall 
erase  half  the  Oriental  names  printed  on  our  maps  and 
substitute  Russian  ones,  shall  mark  in  new  railways, 
new  roads,  irrigation  systems,  lately  discovered  lakes 
and  mountains. 

Russia  does  not  advertise  her  doings,  and  as  yet  the 
travel  book  is  almost  unknown  in  Russian  literature. 
For  English  people  wanting  to  find  information  about 
interesting  parts  of  the  Russian  Empire  there  is  nothing 
that  the  translator  can  put  his  hand  to  and  translate. 
The  educated  Russians  are  content  to  live  in  com- 
parative ignorance  of  their  own  country  and  their  own 
peoples.  Of  all  the  newspapers  there  is  only  one  that 
is  well  served  with  information  regarding  the  Empire, 
and  that  is  the  Novoe  Vretnya,  read  by  some  himdred 


240  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

thousand  people  of  the  miHtary,  aristocratic,  and 
official  castes.  Russia  has  not  had  clear  sight  of  the 
enormous  importance  in  the  world  her  Empire  is.  It 
has,  therefore,  been  difficult  for  us  to  realise  it  — 
especially  as  half  our  attention  was  taken  up  by  the 
German  bogey.  We  have  surmised  with  some  distrust 
the  miUtary  and  political  advance  of  Russia  in  the 
East.  We  have  not  read  the  homely  word  Colonisa- 
tion under  the  bitter  word  Russification,  nor  seen 
the  peasant  pioneers  going  before  mihtary  interference 
and  giving  a  natural  plea  for  imperial  absorption. 
The  great  fact  about  Northern  Persia,  Western  and 
Northern  MongoUa  and  the  inclusive  regions  of  Trans- 
Caucasia,  Turkestan,  and  Seven  Rivers  Land  is  that 
there  is  an  incessant  stream  of  peasant  colonisation 
thither  —  Hke  a  river  of  men  flowing  out  of  the  depths 
of  European  Russia.  What  is  called  Russia  in  Asia 
is  ceasing  to  be  part  of  Asia  and  is  becoming  part  of 
Europe  in  the  political  sense. 

Whilst  I  tramped  Eastward,  across  Russian  Central 
Asia,  all  the  early  part  of  summer  I  was  scarcely 
ever  out  of  sight  of  the  caravans  of  the  Russian  peasant 
pioneers.  At  night  they  camped  on  the  open  steppe 
as  I  did,  sleeping  under  the  stars;  in  the  morning 
when  the  horses  or  oxen  were  put  in  and  the  caravan 
started  once  more  it  was  with  eyes  and  faces  towards 
the  dawn. 

The  days  were  so  hot  that  everyone  was  up  betimes 


FUTURE   OF   THE   RUSSIAN   EMPIRE     241 

and  the  road  was  filled  with  traffic,  whilst  only  in  the 
east  there  was  whiteness  and  over  the  rest  of  the  sky 
the  jewelled  darkness  of  night.  I  was  awakened 
regularly  by  the  heavy  lumbering  of  wheels,  and  look- 
ing to  the  high  road  saw  the  little  patches  of  grey 
and  black  that  were  wagons  moving  away  towards 
the  pallor  of  dawn,  breaking  the  silence  of  night  with 
the  peculiar  grunting  and  cracking  sound  of  heavy 
merchandise  moving  slowly  and  ponderously  on  creak- 
ing drays. 

There  were  the  carts  of  new  settlers  all  going  a 
thousand  versts  and  more;  there  were  the  carts  of 
traders  who  go  to  hawk  their  goods  in  the  villages, 
carts  with  consignments  of  goods,  native  carts  with 
8  ft.  wheels,  carts  harnessed  to  bulls,  to  oxen,  to  camels. 
There  were  strings  of  camels  with  merchandise  ;  camels 
with  mountains  of  sheepskins  on  their  backs,  and  on 
top  of  the  mountains  men.  There  were  whole  tribes 
with  their  herds  and  their  tents,  the  women  all  on 
brilliantly  caparisoned  horses,  the  men  on  undulating 
groaning  camels. 

We  went  from  oasis  to  oasis.  About  every  ten  miles 
there  was  a  Russian  village,  not  a  weary,  sun-stricken 
collection  of  mud  huts,  but  a  real  Httle  Russian  village, 
with  white  cottages  and  thatched  roofs,  with  schools 
and  churches  and  little  shops  —  but  how  much  more 
delectable  than  in  Russia !  First,  afar,  you  saw  a 
clump  of  green  trees;    then  as  you  got  nearer  you 


242  RUSSIA  AND   THE  WORLD 

distinguished  ranks  of  green  poplars  —  young,  tall, 
regular,  and  lofty.  Then  you  came  to  a  notice-board 
that  told  the  date  of  the  foundation  of  the  village  and 
the  number  of  souls,  male  and  female,  at  the  last 
census  thus :  — 

Krasnovodskoe, 

founded  1884. 

Souls 

500  male, 

400  female. 

The  ratio  was  generally  as  five  is  to  four.  Then  you 
entered  a  beautiful  shady  village  where  the  cottages 
had  front  gardens  and  roses  abloom. 

I  found  the  villages  an  interesting  contrast  to  those 
in  Russia.  In  Russia  the  villages  are  in  the  clearings, 
and  dense  forest  lies  between ;  but  here  the  land  was 
bare  of  trees  all  the  way  between,  and  the  villages 
were  in  little  forests  of  their  own  growing.  But,  of 
course,  none  of  the  Russian  trees,  no  pines,  firs,  birches, 
maples,  but  poplars,  willows,  acacias  without  end. 
Water  ran  along  hundreds  of  gullies,  and  the  ducks 
flopped  about  in  them,  and  called  to  one  another. 
The  houses  when  you  entered  them  you  found  to  be 
thick-walled,  cool,  white,  and  astonishingly  clean. 
The  settled  population  was  tall,  strong,  clear-eyed, 
and  rich  as  Russian  peasants  go  —  but  without  any 
knowledge  of  what  was  happening  in  the  world  where 
newspapers  exist.     For  the  rest  there  was  an  air  of 


FUTURE   OF   THE   RUSSIAN   EMPIRE     243 

smartness  and  newness  as  if  all  the  people  had  new 
hopes  —  something  of  the  spirit  of  America  rather 
than  of  Russia.  As  the  wagons  all  stopped  at  the 
villages  and  the  colonists  and  hawkers  swarmed  into 
the  little  inns  there  was  always  a  great  deal  of  life  and 
merriment.  But  no  one  could  stop  long.  The  road 
called  relentlessly,  even  at  midday. 

How  hot  it  was !  In  order  to  make  my  siesta  at 
noon  it  was  necessary  to  improvise  a  tent,  tying  my 
green  plaid  to  a  telegraph  pole  and  to  various  heavy 
stones  on  the  ground  and  getting  thereby  a  patch  of 
shade  in  which  I  could  sit  and  wonder  what  the  tem- 
perature might  be.  How  thankful  I  was  when  a  little 
breeze  began  to  flap  and  ripple  in  the  folds  of  my  plaid 
thus  stretched.  The  people  on  the  road  went  on, 
heat  or  no.  A  Sart  came  past  in  a  blue  cloak  and  with 
a  tinsel  skull-cap  on  his  head ;  he  looked  like  a  represen- 
tation of  the  Chinese  Emperor  in  a  comic  opera.  Five 
soldiers  came  by  in  a  native  cart,  the  roof  painted  in 
sky-blue  blobs  on  dirty  cream,  the  horses  with  ten 
necklaces  of  blue  beads  round  their  necks  and  with 
dangling  swishing  brooms  of  red  strings  hanging  from 
the  high  shafts  and  keeping  the  flies  from  the  horses' 
sides.  A  native  squatted  on  one  of  the  horses  and 
rested  his  flat  brown  feet  on  the  shafts  —  the  sun  was 
nothing  to  him.  The  soldiers  had  evidently  been 
discharged  far  away  and  had  got  to  get  home  as  best 
they  could,  and  had  clubbed  together  for  this  con- 


244  RUSSIA  AND   THE   WORLD 

veyance.  After  them  came  weary  soldiers  clumping 
along  on  foot,  and  then  people  travelling  in  wagons 
and  post-carts,  and  lying  fast  asleep  in  them.  Then 
colonists  once  more,  and  the  endless  line  of  dusty, 
worn-out,  lop-sided  wagons  that  looked  like  enlarged 
pictures  of  old  boots  left  in  the  mud. 

I  pulled  down  my  tent  after  an  hour  and  got  on  a 
little  way  —  to  the  next  village.  Before  the  village 
was  a  stream  and  a  bridge.  When  I  came  up  to  it  I 
found  an  enormous  accumulation  of  carts  all  bereft 
of  their  teams  —  for  horses  and  oxen  had  been  let 
loose  to  graze  —  and  under  the  bridge  and  along  the 
river  such  a  scene  of  Edenic  simplicity  and  bliss  as  I 
had  not  witnessed  since  I  went  with  the  peasants  to 
the  River  Jordan.  I  also  had  a  bathe  —  a  river  with 
three  feet  of  water  is  a  rarity  in  these  parts.  Bright 
little  tumbling  river  that  rose  in  the  mountains  and 
went  on  across  the  high  road  to  lose  itself  —  not  in 
any  sea,  but  in  the  cruel  desert,  where  it  finally  becomes 
nothing !  So,  here  for  us  afternoon  turned  to  evening, 
with  refreshment,  and  though  the  setting  sun  was 
still  hot  on  our  shoulders  we  felt  night  breezes  fanning 
us  in  front. 

We  passed  through  ancient  towns  —  all  mud  huts, 
ruins,  mosques.  The  bazaars  had  been  made  into 
covered  bazaars  by  tying  ropes  across  the  busy  streets 
and  spreading  green  willow  branches  across  them. 
Here  sat  the  natives  at  work  at  their  trades  or  lounging 


FUTURE   OF   THE   RUSSIAN   EMPIRE     245 

in  their  caravanserais,  or  waiting  for  koumis  customers. 
There  were  falcons  in  cages  in  many  of  the  little  shops. 
Sarts  on  horseback  came  carrying  their  pet  falcons  on 
their  wrists  as  they  went. 

One  evening  I  chmbed  up  on  to  a  green  tableland 
surrounded  by  rocky  summits  and  snowy  peaks,  a  fine 
romantic  camping  ground,  and  there  I  fell  in  with  a 
band  of  rich  emigrants  going  from  Stavropol,  in  South 
Russia,  to  beyond  Kopal.  They  had  twenty-four  ox- 
drawn  carts  and  twelve  drawn  by  horses,  and  in  the 
carts  were  their  household  goods  —  tables,  chairs,  beds 
and  bedding,  agricultural  implements,  reaping  and 
binding  machines,  ploughs,  grindstones,  saws,  axes, 
even  metal  baths,  barrels,  guns,  pots,  and  whatnot, 
in  such  miscellaneity  and  promiscuity  mixed  with 
mothers  and  babies,  that  it  was  touching  to  see.  The 
oxen  in  their  wooden  yokes  were  fine  beasts  and  the 
emigrants  tended  them  on  foot.  Every  wagon  was 
accompanied  by  one  or  two  on  foot,  who  flicked  off 
the  flies  and  encouraged  the  oxen  along,  sang  songs, 
and  shouted  to  one  another.  Every  wagon  had 
buckets  swinging  at  the  side.  One  wagon  had  several 
cages  of  doves  fixed  on  to  it;  to  another  a  poor  old 
dog  was  tied  and  came  along  unwillingly.  In  short, 
everything  they  could  bring  from  Mother  Russia  to 
the  new  land  the  emigrants  had  brought. 

"How  long  have  you  been  on  the  way?"  I  asked.  — 
"Fourteen  days  in  the  train  and  twelve  on  the  road,"  a 


246  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

boy   answered   me.     "How   many   days   to   go?"  — 
"Thirty,  perhaps." 

I  had  been  much  astonished  to  see  a  drunken  party 
in  one  of  the  villages  as  I  came  along  —  a  score  of  men, 
young  and  old,  all  with  their  arms  round  one  another's 
necks  and  singing  frantic  tunes.  I  took  it  to  be  a 
wedding,  but  was  mistaken,  for  I  afterwards  found  it 
belonged  to  this  party  of  emigrants.  Presently  a 
cartful  of  drunkards  came  rattling  past  me  at  a  furious 
rate.  They  were  all  singing  the  Church  service,  one 
in  a  red  shirt  was  trying  to  keep  time  with  his  hand, 
another  was  astride  the  side  of  the  cart  and  had  one 
leg  in  and  one  out,  an  old  greybeard  was  sitting  with 
his  back  to  the  horses,  and  a  young  man  was  sitting 
down  among  the  other  people's  feet.  In  the  cart 
was  also  a  little  girl  —  somebody's  darling.  They 
went  along  at  a  terrific  pace,  and  as  they  passed  me, 
despite  their  bawHng,  I  heard  one  man  say:  "No! 
Wait  a  bit,  you've  not  got  it  right."  But  no  one  paid 
any  attention  to  him,  and  the  huUaballoo  went  on  — 
"  Yaoh,  yaoh,  yaoh,  yu,  yu,  yohihoah  .  .  .  Yu." 

They  caught  up  the  main  body  of  ox-wagons  and 
held  a  parley  with  one  of  the  young  women  tending  the 
oxen,  but  were  evidently  rebuffed,  for  when  I  caught 
up,  the  old  man  was  saying,  "I  said  we  were  fools,  we 
were  making  a  mistake ;  great  fools."  Saying  which  he 
was  pouring  out  glasses  of  red  wine  from  a  half-emptied 
gallon  bottle  and  spilling  as  much  as  he  poured. 


FUTURE   OF  THE   RUSSIAN   EMPIRE     247 

"Do  these  dear  drunken  fellows  belong  to  your 
party?"  I  asked  of  the  boy  with  whom  I  had  fallen 
into  conversation. 

"Yes,  ours.  They  are  all  that  are  left.  Many  have 
fallen  behind,  and  they  will  have  to  hire  carts  if  they 
want  to  catch  up." 

"Are  you  all  going  to  Kopal?" 

"Yes.  No  room  to  Kve  in  Russia.  We  have  been 
trickling  thither  from  our  part  for  a  long  while.  Many 
of  ours  out  there  —  many." 

"Have  you  got  land  out  there?" 

"Yes,  we  have  taken  land.  We  sent  a  man  out 
and  he  has  found  us  good  land,  and  all  our  people  are 
going,  young  and  old.     Nobody  remains  behind." 

He,  in  turn,  asked  me  whether  I  was  going  out  to 
work  on  a  farm  or  going  to  buy  land  or  what,  and  I 
told  him  as  best  I  could,  and  he  told  me  to  put  my 
pack  on  one  of  the  wagons,  for  it  must  be  heavy. 
"All  the  same,"  said  he,  "on  foot  or  travelling  with 
oxen,  you  have  got  to  walk  nearly  all  the  time.  But 
it  is  not  good  to  have  a  weight  on  your  back  as  well." 

After  this  for  many  days  I  was  in  sight  of  this  cara- 
van of  wagons,  watched  their  progress,  and  had  many 
talks,  sometimes  resting  my  pack  with  them,  but 
more  often  falling  behind  or  going  ahead  of  them.  At 
night  I  spread  my  plaid  near  them,  watched  their 
fires  Hght  up,  listened  to  the  frequent  crack  of  the 
gun  —  for  they  shot  any  bird  or  beast  they  saw  and 


248  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

consigned  it  to  the  evening  pot,  was  lulled  to  sleep 
by  their  Russian  songs,  and  eventually  wakened  next 
morning  by  the  roll  of  their  wheels  on  the  road.  The 
drunken  ones,  I  may  say,  gradually  caught  up  and 
became  sober.  They  took  their  places  beside  the 
straining  beasts  of  burden,  and  let  the  others  rest  in 
the  canvas  or  bast-shaded  wagons.  One  morning 
when  a  wheel  broke,  behold  the  old  greybeard,  axe  in 
hand,  busily  at  work  at  repairs. 

One  day  in  the  heat  of  noon  we  came  to  a  little 
brook,  and  so  overwhelming  was  the  heat  that  the 
whole  long  procession  came  to  a  standstill,  and  the 
oxen  were  let  loose  on  the  moor.  They  were  furious 
with  thirst,  but  would  scarcely  look  at  the  water,  so 
shallow  and  muddy  was  it.  They  were  loose  in  pairs 
with  their  necks  still  in  their  wooden  halters,  so  it 
was  very  difficult  for  them  to  He  down  or  get  rest. 
They  began  to  try  to  gore  one  another,  and  to  bolt, 
and  for  three  or  four  hours  the  emigrants  tried  in 
vain  to  pacify  them,  and  bring  them  back  to  the  shafts. 
On  another  occasion  we  went  some  fifty  miles  without 
coming  to  a  house  or  a  stream  or  a  bit  of  shelter,  and 
our  sufferings  were  all  rather  heavy.  Such  is  the  way 
of  the  road.  Such  is  the  way  of  the  pioneers  of  the 
Empire. 

The  Russian  Government  controls  the  stream  of 
emigrants  and  defines  precisely  where  colonists  may 
go  and  where  they  may  not  go.     It  dams  a  river  and 


FUTURE   OF  THE  RUSSIAN  EMPIRE     249 

deflects  the  water  through  a  stretch  of  countty  needing 
irrigation,  and  that  done,  lets  the  stream  of  people 
follow  the  water.  It  marks  out  plots  of  land  and  plans 
villages  all  in  advance  of  the  arrival  of  newcomers 
who  will  occupy  them.  Even  so,  nothing  is  left  hap- 
hazard; the  prospective  settlements  and  farms  are 
booked  in  advance,  and  the  colonists  travelling  the 
long  road  with  their  wagons  and  effects  have  no  hunt 
for  land  in  front  of  them;  they  are  going  to  definite 
places  which  they  have  agreed  to  occupy.  We  travelled 
from  valley  to  valley  with  songs  and  hopes  as  to  the 
promised  land  —  land  promised  by  the  Tsar,  and  a 
ten-  or  twenty-pound  Government  loan  with  it  into 
the  bargain. 

Alas,  not  seldom  it  is  not  twenty  pounds,  or  two 
hundred,  or  two  thousand  that  would  suffice  to  start  a 
family  on  the  land  allotted.  The  colonists  on  the  road 
nurse  a  happy  dream  —  they  are  going  to  Eldorado, 
the  future  lies  in  their  minds  all  glimmering  in  rose 
and  gold.  The  sight  of  the  prosperous  villages  they 
pass  through  confirms  them  in  the  belief  that  they  are 
going  to  a  land  three  times  as  rich  and  happy  as  that 
they  have  left.  But  often  at  the  end  of  the  way 
awaits  them  a  dreary,  treeless  stretch  of  barren  sand. 
The  great  shady  villages  of  Syr  Daria  have  taken 
twenty  or  thirty  years  to  build  up,  and  they  started 
in  better  country.  Even  on  the  best  virgin  land 
immense  labour  is  necessary,  and,  as  I  say,  it  is  often 


250  RUSSIA   AND   THE  WORLD 

a  tract  of  desert  that  has  been  chosen,  and  no  amount 
of  labour  would  suffice  to  make  it  blossom  as  the  rose. 
Fifteen  per  cent,  of  the  emigrants  return  home  to  Russia 
empty  handed,  all  lost. 

Legally  they  have  only  themselves  to  blame,  though 
indeed  they  are  more  inclined  to  say  it  is  the  will  of 
God  than  to  blame  anyone.  The  Russian  Government 
invites  no  one  to  emigrate  to  Central  Asia  or  to  Siberia. 
That  is  the  first  sentence  of  the  Government  handbook 
on  emigration.  But  seeing  that  there  is  ''no  room  to 
breathe "  in  some  parts  of  Russia,  and  that  the  people 
are  always  moving  outward,  it  takes  upon  itself  the 
duty  of  regulating  the  movement,  and  providing  all 
the  help  and  protection  for  the  colonists  that  is  within 
its  power. 

But,  needless  to  say,  the  voluntary  colonisation  of 
distant  parts  of  the  Empire  is  extremely  advantageous 
to  the  Russian  Government  in  the  furtherance  of  its 
political  designs;  the  Government  encourages  the 
emigration  of  Russians  to  the  very  frontier  lines,  and 
even  over  the  lines  into  Persia  and  China,  and  on  the 
pretext  of  defending  its  interests  lends  its  military 
power  to  the  extension  of  its  unnecessarily  large  domin- 
ion. The  Russian  Empire  is  vast,  fertile  and  empty, 
but  its  southern  and  eastern  limits  are  marked  by  a 
crust  of  colonisation.  For  instance,  in  the  whole 
extent  of  Russian  Central  Asia  it  is  only  to  the  frontier 
of  China  that  emigration  is  at  present  allowed.     There 


FUTURE   OF   THE   RUSSIAN   EMPIRE     251 

is  a  long  slender  line  of  colonisation  to  the  city  of  Verney, 
just  a  gossamer  thread  of  villages,  and  then  all  about 
Jarkent  and  Kopal  and  Lepsinsk  plots  of  land  and  pro- 
spective villages  in  abundance.  Nothing  that  is  less  than 
800  miles  from  a  railway  station  is  offered  to  the  colonists. 

If  a  Russian  family  wishes  to  emigrate,  the  Russian 
Government  insists  that  it  send  first  of  all  a  messenger 
—  what  is  called  in  Russian  a  Khodok,  one  who  walks. 
The  Khodok  is  allowed  to  wander  about  and  compare 
the  plots  of  land  offered  by  the  Government  and  make 
a  choice.  He  is  obhged  to  have  a  stamped  certificate 
from  the  family  he  represents,  and  he  has  then  the 
power  to  take  land  in  the  name  of  this  family.  One 
Khodok  may  represent  three  families  but  no  more, 
so  they  generally  set  out  in  twos  and  threes,  since  the 
Russian  peasants  are  inclined  to  emigrate  in  numbers, 
almost  in  whole  villages.  Needless  to  say,  these  mes- 
sengers are  sometimes  stupid,  sometimes  adventurous 
men,  who  either  select  an  absurd  portion,  or  who  dis- 
appear and  never  return.  But  most  of  them  are  level- 
headed peasants  who  do  the  best  they  can  for  the 
families  who  trust  them.  In  any  case,  the  respon- 
sibiHty  is  great. 

The  land  being  taken  and  the  messenger  returned, 
there  is  necessarily  great  excitement  and  hubbub  in  the 
village  —  and  no  doubt  some  repentance  here  and  there. 
The  families  have  to  face  the  reahties  of  voluntary 
exile,  the  parting  with  old  faces,  old  scenes,  the  village 


252  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

church,  the  graveyard  where  their  dead  He  buried, 
Russia  herself.  They  have  to  abandon  their  old 
cottages  and  sell  at  a  loss  many  things  that  it  would 
be  folly  to  take  with  them.  They  have  to  pack  their 
goods  to  take  away,  to  see  their  Hve-stock  bestowed 
in  the  cattle  trucks,  and  get  proper  receipts  for  every- 
thing the  railway  is  taking  for  them.  For  twelve 
roubles  (twenty-five  shiUings)  the  railway  will  carry 
a  ton  1,500  miles  —  a  penny  a  hundred- weight  a  mile. 
They  book  their  goods  to  the  railway  station  nearest 
to  the  land  they  have  taken,  and  take  tickets  for 
themselves  in  the  emigrant's  train. 

There  are  special  rates  for  colonists  that  would 
astonish  the  comparatively  obstructionary  Canadian  or 
American  railways.  The  greatest  distance  you  can 
travel  straight  on  by  rail  in  Russia  is  greater  —  some- 
thing Hke  7,000  miles  the  distance  from  Odessa  to 
Vladivostok.  But  such  a  journey  costs  only  thirteen 
roubles  or  twenty-seven  shilhngs  —  say,  seven  dollars ; 
and  in  order  to  reach  the  vast  emptiness  of  the  middle 
West  and  far  West  of  America  it  is  necessary  to  pay 
between  five  and  twelve  pounds  railway  fare  from 
New  York.     The  following  is  the  Russian  rate  :  — 

500  versts,  i.e.  375  miles  i  rouble  40  kopecks  =  3  shillings 

750    "  4/6 

1,500    "  7/- 

3,000    "  12/- 

6,000    "  24/- 


Hoisting  the  Ataman  at  the  mobilisation.  The  Cossacks  also 
came  to  the  author  and  said:  -  Pozuoltye  uas  raskatchat  — 
permit  us  to  give  you  a  swing." 


FUTURE   OF  THE   RUSSIAN   EMPIRE     253 

So  the  price  of  a  railway  ticket  is  very  little  hindrance 
to  the  wandering  of  the  Russian  emigrant.  The  land 
they  take  at  the  end  of  a  journey  is  given  them  free  and 
is  made  their  property  under  certain  conditions.  Loans 
are  made  according  to  the  portion  of  the  land  and  the 
difficulty  of  cultivating  it.  A  hundred  roubles  in 
certain  districts  near  Verney  and  Pishpek,  two  hundred 
roubles  in  the  raions  of  Kopal  and  Jarkent.  A  hundred 
roubles  is  about  ten  pounds.  The  loan  is  made  to  the 
family  and  is  returnable  in  fifteen  years.  The  first 
five  years  nothing  is  paid  back,  but  after  that  a  tenth 
has  to  be  returned  each  year.  The  Government  is 
not,  however,  strict  where  a  family  is  making  a  good 
fight  for  existence.  In  poor  villages  the  Government 
takes  upon  itself  the  expenses  of  building  materials 
for  school  and  church  —  the  colonists  are  recommended 
to  give  their  labour  free  on  "the  work  of  God."  Wells 
are  sunk  in  places  and  roads  made  —  a  Government 
expense.  It  will  be  seen,  therefore,  that  a  great  deal 
is  done  to  substantiate  the  dreams  of  the  colonists, 
and  that  where  villages  wither  away  and  families 
desert  their  holdings  and  go  home,  failure  is  due  to  a 
mistaken  original  plan  on  the  part  of  the  Government 
surveyors  and  to  a  foolish  choice  on  the  part  of  Khodoki. 
How  different  is  the  colonisation  of  the  Russian 
Empire  from  our  colonisation,  and  how  different  our 
Empire  from  theirs  !  What  an  advantage  the  Russian 
has  in  being  compact,  all  on  land,  all  within  the  grasp 


254  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

of  a  possible  railway  system,  and  liable  to  one  spiritual 
and  national  nourishment  on  direct  lines.  Our  people 
are  separated  from  one  another  by  immense  seas.  It 
takes  much  longer  time  and  costs  vastly  more  money 
to  make  a  journey  from  one  part  to  another.  In  our 
prosperity  we  tend  to  forget  our  essential  unity,  to 
let  loose  the  ties  of  the  motherland  or  the  children 
lands.  We  tend  to  be  just  English,  no  more ;  to  hold 
too  narrow  a  conception  of  our  race  and  function; 
whereas  Russia,  even  in  the  days  of  failure  and  weak- 
ness, tends  to  be  altogether,  to  be  large  but  vital. 
If  all  this  Russian  space  does  fill  up  with  Russians, 
what  a  collective  voice  Russia  is  going  to  have  !  What 
a  bass ! 

But  to  return  to  the  colonists  themselves  and  to  my 
impressions  of  them  as  I  journey  through  a  new  colonial 
country.  I  have  not  been  very  much  impressed  with 
the  life  of  the  new  land.  The  settlers  are  prosperous 
and  healthy,  their  houses  are  larger,  cleaner,  and  more 
seemly  than  in  European  Russia,  but  the  spirit  that 
really  makes  Russia  interesting  to  us  Westerns  is 
lacking.  Religion  is  on  the  wane  and  national  customs 
are  forgotten.  Nearly  everyone  can  read  and  write, 
but  reads  so  little  and  writes  so  ill.  The  illiterate 
man  may  be  as  wise  as  Solomon,  but  the  man  who 
has  learned  to  read  has  the  whole  long  road  of  culture 
in  front  of  him.  In  a  land  where  there  are  no  squires, 
no  gentry,  no  intelligentsia,  the  colonist  forgets  where 


FUTURE   OF   THE   RUSSIAN   EMPIRE     255 

he  stands  with  regard  to  his  fellow  men  and  to  the 
world,  and  he  quickly  assumes  that  classes  are  divided 
by  wealth  and  wealth  only.  The  motto  of  the  colonist 
is  "get  rich."  There  is  little  else  in  the  life  of  Central 
Asia  but  the  nascent  gospel  of  "get  rich";  it  is  fuU 
of  cheating,  swindling,  harrying  the  Kirghiz  and  the 
Sart,  colonial  vulgarity  and  "bounce."  As  I  read  in 
the  local  pamphlet,  "it  flatters  one's  self-esteem  to  be 
rich"  —  a  thought  almost  essentially  American,  and 
certainly  far  removed  from  the  religion  of  suffering. 
It  will  be  interesting  to  see  whether  the  cultural  bar- 
renness of  Australia  and  America  is  to  be  repeated 
in  Siberia  and  Russian  Central  Asia.  Perhaps  not, 
seeing  how  much  literary  and  artistic  talent  has  been 
sunk  in  Siberia  by  the  exile  of  revolutionaries,  seeing 
also  that  the  ever-increasing  railway  stem  supplies 
or  tends  to  supply  the  colonies  with  the  Hterature  of 
the  great  European  cities.  Already  the  Httle  city  of 
Verney  sends  some  thirty  matriculated  students  to 
the  university  each  year ;  at  least,  so  I  was  told  by  a 
student  whom  I  met  at  Pishpek,  and  with  whom  I 
journeyed  part  of  his  way  home  from  Kief.  And 
having  gone  through  a  university  course  is  not  a  mark 
of  wealth  or  social  position  in  Russia,  it  is  essentially 
an  educational  distinction. 

When  I  passed  into  Seven  Rivers  Land  and  beyond 
Verney  along  the  Eastern  frontier  to  Kopal  it  was 
touching  to  see  the  plight  of  the  new  settlers  just 


256  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

arrived  on  their  bit  of  land.  Whatever  hard  word 
may  be  spoken  of  the  estabhshed  population  must  be 
withdrawn  from  these  adventurous,  much-suffering, 
much-hoping,  much-believing  people.  All  endeavour 
is  blessed ;  all  success  is  in  a  certain  sense  abhorrent, 
and  we  look  with  smiles  and  tears  at  the  labours  of 
pioneers,  whereas  we  curse  in  one  short  word  the 
prosperity  which  follows  twenty  years  after  the  pioneers 
have  achieved  the  heroic  task  of  making  a  village  where 
no  humans  have  ever  dwelt  before.  It  is  our  heroic 
human  way  of  thinking;  we  honour  all  attempting 
and  daring  and  sacrificing  because  they  reflect  the  God 
in  man. 

So  along  the  Central  Asian  road  human  thrills  are 
in  store  for  every  educated  man  observant  of  the 
beginnings  of  life.  Here  the  1,000-verst  road  journey 
comes  to  an  end.  The  oxen  are  unyoked  and  the  camp 
is  pitched  finally;  good  Russian  prayers  are  said  and 
words  of  thankfulness  that  the  long  journey  has  come 
to  its  true  and  successful  end,  there  are  exclamations 
of  gladness ;  the  colonists  kiss  one  another  and  promise 
one  another  new  life;  there  are  also  grumblings, 
lamentings,  scolding  of  the  messengers  who  have 
chosen  ill. 

First  of  all  trees  are  planted.  How  pathetic  to  see 
the  long  rows  of  three-feet  high  poplar  shoots  and 
willow  twigs !  A  month  on  this  sun-beaten  road 
leaves  no  doubt  in  the  emigrant's  mind  as  to  what 


FUTURE   OF   THE   RUSSIAN   EMPIRE     257 

is  the  first  necessity  —  shade,  shade.     Trees  are  planted 
all  along  the  main  Government  dyke.     The  colonist 
chooses  the  place  for  his  house  and  he  digs  a  trench 
all  round  it  and  lets  in  water  from  the  dyke,  and  he 
plants  trees  along  the  trench.     Then  he  buys    stout 
poplar  trunks  and  willow  trunks  and  makes  the  frame- 
work of  his  cottage.     He  interlaces  Httle  willow  twigs 
and  makes  the  sort  of  wilted  green,  sHghtly  shady, 
sHghtly  sunny  house  that  children  might  put  up  in  a 
wood  in  England.     But  that  is  only  the  beginning. 
To  the  willow  house  he  slaps  on  mud-puddings.     This 
is  the  filthiest  work;    he  makes  a  great  quantity  of 
mud  and  treads  it  up  and  down  with  his  bare  feet  till 
he  gets  the  consistency  he  requires,  and  then  with  his 
hand  he  fetches  out  sloppy  lumps  of  it  and  builds  his 
walls.     In  a  few  days  the  mud  hardens,  and  he  has  a 
shady  and  substantial  dwelling  and  one  that  in  an 
earthquake   will   swing,    but   will    not   collapse.     His 
roof  he  makes  of  prairie  grass,  great  reeds  ten  to  fifteei\ 
feet  in  length  and  thick  and  strong,  or  of  willow  twigs 
again  and  turf.     In  his  second  year  he  has  a  little  hay 
harvest  on  his  roof.     He  ploughs  his  Httle  bit  of  desert. 
He  exchanges  some  of  his  oxen  for  cows.     He  strives 
with  all  his  power  —  as  does  a  transplanted  flower  — 
to  take   root.     He  looks   forlorn.     You  look   at  his 
poor  estate  and  say:    "It  is  a  poor  experiment;    the 
Sim  is  too  strong  for  him,  he  will  just  wither  off  and 
the  desert  will  be  as  before."     But  you  come  another 


258  RUSSIA  AND   THE   WORLD 

day  and  you  see  a  change  and  exclaim :  "He  has  taken 
root  after  all;  there  is  a  shoot  of  young  life  there, 
tender  and  green."  Along  the  road  I  noticed  villages 
of  all  ages ;  of  this  year,  of  last  year,  of  four  years 
gone;  of  twenty  years,  forty  years.  And  I  took 
shade  now  and  then  beside  the  deserted  hovels  of 
those  whom  the  desert  and  the  sun  had  beaten. 


Russia  and  Russian  Central  Asia  and  Siberia  are  in 
much  more  intimate  relationship  than  Britain  and 
South  Africa,  for  instance.  The  heights  of  the  Mon- 
golian frontier  are  still  Russia,  and  the  colonists  there 
are  taxed  from  Russia,  send  their  annual  recruits  to 
the  Russian  Army,  are  reached  by  land  from  Russia 
and  look  towards  the  great  cities  of  the  motherland, 
Petrograd,  Moscow,  Kief,  as  towards  their  own  great 
cities.  Our  colonies  are  by  no  means  extensions  of 
Britain  or  of  Europe. 

An  interesting  comparison  may  be  drawn  between 
the  tasks  of  Russian  and  English  statesmanship  in 
the  moulding  of  the  respective  Empires.  The  late 
Joseph  Chamberlain  saw  the  British  Empire  as  a 
great  self-supporting,  self-sufficient  unity,  able  to 
produce  all  the  food  and  clothing  it  required,  not 
needing  to  import  anything  from  non-British  countries. 
He  wished  a  large  thing  —  not  a  collection  of  separated 
fourth-rate  powers  making  laws  at  will  one  against 


FUTURE   OF   THE   RUSSIAN   EMPIRE     259 

the  other.  He  wanted  the  British  subject  to  be  always 
conscious  that  he  was  an  integral  part  of  something 
mighty  and  wonderful,  wanted  him  to  reflect  in  his 
soul  a  large  consciousness,  the  sense  of  our  whole  vast 
majestical  domain,  and  not  merely  the  narrow  con- 
sciousness of  a  Httle  self-despising  overcrowded  island 
or  young  commercial  settlement.  The  consummation 
of  such  an  ideal  demanded  a  great  ocean  service  and  a 
mighty  navy.  England  must  remain,  in  fact,  Mistress 
of  the  Sea,  and  the  salt  floods  that  separate  should  in 
reahty  join  us  and  be  our  national  high  roads.  A 
great  ideal  —  but  it  has  turned  out  to  be  more  difficult 
to  realise  than  the  statesman  imagined  —  the  sea  has 
separated  us  and  has  been  difficult  to  bridge  over. 
There  has  not  been  the  cheapening  of  passenger  rates 
necessary  for  a  great  interchange  of  populations; 
there  has  been  no  journalistic  entente  between  any  of 
the  countries  of  the  Empire.  It  has  been  difficult  to 
"get  across"  to  one  another,  in  body,  mind  or  soul. 
Only  now,  perhaps,  are  we  commencing  an  era  in  which 
great  measures  wiU  be  taken  for  the  unification  of  the 
Empire. 

How  much  easier  the  task  of  Russia,  the  only  other 
colonial  Empire  of  to-day!  Her  distant  populations 
have  not  crossed  the  seas.  They  have  never  felt  them- 
selves to  be  separate  communities  with  separate  in- 
terests. Fares  have  always  been  cheap  and  time  has 
never   been  valuable.     No   one   except   the   political 


26o    '        RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

exile  and  the  convict  has  felt  cut  off  from  Russia,  and 
only  among  the  political  and  penal  population  in 
Siberia  has  the  idea  of  separation  found  any  home. 
There,  by  the  way,  it  has,  and  many  times  in  the 
backwoods  of  Siberia  there  has  been  mooted  the  idea 
of  a  new  "War  of  Independence "  and  of  the  foundation 
of  a  "United  States  of  Siberia."  That  was  one  of  the 
dangers  inherent  in  the  poHcy  of  making  Siberia  the 
outer  darkness  of  those  who  found  no  favour  in  the 
eyes  of  the  Tsar.  Siberia  is  in  time  of  peace  a  Radical 
and  disaffected  country. 

It  is  otherwise,  however,  in  Russian  Central  Asia. 
Here  loyalty  is  supreme.  No  Radical  and  sectarian 
emigrants  are  allowed  to  settle  there,  and,  above  all, 
no  one  whose  conscience  will  not  allow  him  to  bear 
arms.  The  Government  has  pursued  a  poHcy  of  making 
the  population  as  miKtary  as  possible.  In  the  event 
of  a  Mongol  or  Persian  inroad  the  Russian  colonists 
could  hold  their  own  without  the  help  of  the  regular 
army. 

It  is  improbable  that  any  Russian  Government  will 
grant  local  self-government  to  Turkestan,  Seven  Rivers 
or  Siberia  —  unless  at  some  time  a  revolution  should 
take  place  and  a  demilitarisation  of  the  Empire.  The 
whole  vast  territory  from  the  Caspian  to  Kamchatka 
will.be  administered  as  an  imperial  and  military  unity. 
And  whilst  it  is  held  together  in  the  strong  grasp  of  an 
autocratic  Government  it  is  firmly  bound  together  in 


FUTURE   OF   THE   RUSSIAN   EMPIRE     261 

a  unity  of  commercial  interests.  By  a  skilful  manipu- 
lation of  tariffs  and  encouragement  of  industries, 
Russia  is  making  herself  a  self-sufficient  Empire  as 
far  as  necessaries  are  concerned.  Agricultural  and 
dairy  products  and  meat  she  has,  of  course,  in  abun- 
dance, as  a  natural  foundation.  She  makes  all  her 
own  sugar,  manufactures  her  own  cotton  goods,  is 
even  on  a  fair  way  to  growing  in  Central  Asia  her  own 
raw  cotton,  enough  to  supply  the  mills  of  Moscow  and 
Lodz.  She  begins  to  manufacture  her  own  wool  and 
cloth  in  sufficient  quantity.  She  has  her  own  furs,  her 
own  timber,  her  own  building  materials.  She  is  mining 
more  coal  and  tapping  more  oil,  and  will  certainly  gain 
in  time  a  sufficiency  of  fuel  for  all  purposes.  What  she 
cannot  produce  for  herself  is  machinery  for  her  factor- 
ies, the  knick-knacks  which  we  in  the  West  make 
by  machinery,  the  luxuries  of  civiHsation.  But  even 
as  regards  luxuries  she  is  well  off  —  having  her 
own  good  Crimean,  Caucasian,  and  Central  Asian 
wines,  her  own  Caucasian  tobacco,  her  own  vodka 
and  liqueurs,  her  caviare,  her  inexhaustible  supply 
of  game. 

In  order  to  visuaHse  the  advantages  of  the  Russian 
Empire  as  compared  with  ours,  it  is  necessary  to  take 
our  dominions  and  colonies  out  of  their  places  on  the 
map  and  tack  them  together  with  Great  Britain,  and 
imagine  Canada  sewed  on  to  our  western  coast  and 
Liverpool  on  the  Canadian  frontier,  Eastbourne  on  the 


262  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

South  African  frontier,  Southampton  on  the  Indian, 
Land's  End  on  the  Austrahan  frontier,  trains  taking 
only  twenty-four  hours  to  Toronto,  only  a  week  to 
Vancouver,  thirty-six  hours  to  Calcutta,  sixty  hours 
to  Madras,  twenty  hours  to  Capetown,  twenty-six 
hours  to  Brisbane,  five  days  to  Perth,  Western  Aus- 
tralia, and  imagine  the  interchange  of  peoples  and  of 
products,  the  circulation  of  our  newspapers,  the 
audiences  of  our  books  and  Parliamentary  speeches, 
the  enlargement  of  our  interests  and  of  our  imperial 
pride.  How  great  would  our  Empire  seem,  how 
strong  —  immeasurably  larger  and  stronger  than  the 
British  Empire  as  we  now  visualise  it,  floated  away 
into  the  distant  places  of  the  seas. 

That  is  the  advantage  of  the  Russian  Empire,  that 
it  can  feel  itself  as  Britain  would  feel  in  this  imaginary 
picture  of  an  all-on-land  Empire.  Despite  the  dream 
of  separatists,  Russia  is  not  likely  to  give  up  this  great 
source  of  strength  —  her  essential  unity. 

My  feeling,  however,  is  that  the  Russian  Empire  is 
large  enough  —  perhaps  already  too  large.  The  Rus- 
sians do  not  need  to  flood  over  towards  Kobdo  in  Mon- 
golia or  towards  the  Persian  capital.  They  tend  to 
lose  themselves  out  there.  Russia  wants  an  outlet 
to  the  sea,  but  the  Japanese  War  has  shown  her  that 
she  is  vulnerable  at  places  like  Port  Arthur,  as  the 
Crimean  War  showed  her  that  she  was  vulnerable  at 


FUTURE   OF   THE   RUSSIAN  EMPIRE     263 

Sebastopol.  Only  in  the  centre  of  Asia  or  of  Europe 
is  she  safe.*  .  .  . 

The  new  railway  to  Verney  goes  on  to  Kuldja  in 
China  and  there  is  talk  of  its  progression  right  across 
Mongolia  to  Kharbin.  Undoubtedly  it  will  cross 
China  some  time  or  other  and  tap  a  great  deal  of 
Chinese  trade.  Already  the  Russians  are  strong  on 
the  Chuisky  Road  that  leads  from  Novy  Nikolaefsk 
on  the  Siberian  railway,  through  Barnaul  and  Bisk, 
Siberian  river  towns,  through  Kosh  Agatch,  the  Altai 
frontier  station,  on  to  Kobdo  in  the  heart  of  Mongolia. 
Great  efforts  are  being  made  to  capture  the  brick-tea 
trade  and  indeed  Mongolian  trade  in  general.  Russian 
influence  is  so  strong  that  MongoHa  is  in  the  nature  of 
an  extra  colony  —  something  that  must  necessarily  be 
taken  over  by  the  Russians  later  on.  It  seems  to  me, 
however,  they  do  not  need  any  territory  beyond  "The 
White  Ones"  as  the  natives  call  the  Altai,  beyond  the 
Ala  Tau  of  Kopal  and  the  great  heights  of  Pamir. 
Within  these  natural  boundaries  they  can  evolve  an 
unexampled  prosperity  —  if  that  is  what  they  wish. 

The  Russian  Treasury  lost  at  least  £50,000,000  per 
annum  by  the  vodka  prohibition.  It  lost  another 
£50,000,000  by  the  cessation  of  imports  and  the  con- 
sequent failure  of  import  duties,  f  •  •  • 

*  Opinion  as  to  efifectiveness  of  Russian  Army  excluded  by  British 
Censor. 

t  Here  followed  22  lines  on  the  financial  situation  of  Russia  excluded  by 
the  British  Censor. 


264  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

Many  new  taxes  have  been  introduced.  Postage  has 
been  raised.  It  now  costs  twopence-halfpenny  to  send 
an  inland  letter  instead  of,  as  formerly,  a  penny  three- 
farthings.  An  extra  ten  roubles  (one  pound)  has  been 
charged  on  telephones.  The  income-tax  has  been 
raised.  New  State  lotteries  have  been  issued.  An 
extra  tax  has  been  levied  on  sugar,  on  matches.  A  tax 
on  bread  and  on  kerosine  has  been  suggested.  But 
Russia  cannot  readily  right  herself  in  that  way.  She 
is  a  spending  country.  Everybody  in  Russia  likes  to 
spend ;   economy  is  very  foreign  to  her  temperament. 

Still  Russia's  power  of  recuperation  after  financial 
exhaustion  is  very  great.  The  great  mass  of  her 
population  is  peasant,  and  it  works  for  a  half  or  one- 
third  of  the  normal  European  wage.  One  or  two  good 
harvests  and  Russia  is  on  her  feet  again,  and  all  Europe 
feels  well  as  a  reflection  of  Russian  well-being. 

That  is  Russia's  function,  to  supply  Europe  with 
bread.  Even  in  war-time  when  all  the  youth  has  gone 
from  the  villages  the  fields  are  sown,  women  sow  them, 
and  if  the  war  lasts  over  summer  women  wiU  reap 
them  and  women  will  sow  them  again  —  women  and 
children  and  old  men.  And  when  the  war  is  over 
and  the  guns  have  been  gathered  in,  the  young  moujiks 
and  the  Cossacks  will  return  and  give  their  arms  to  the 
work  —  and  children  will  grow  up  and  more  children 

"...  green  earth  forgets, 
The  new-born  generations  mask  her  grief." 


FUTURE   OF  THE  RUSSIAN  EMPIRE     265 

There  is  no  new  future  for  the  Russian  peasantry 
except  a  little  modification  in  their  methods  of  cul- 
tivating the  soil,  and  in  the  implements  they  use. 
The  great  health  of  Russia  will  He  in  the  peasants 
remaining  peasants.  I  would  utter  a  warning  to  those 
weU-wishers  of  Russia  who  think  that  it  is  necessary 
to  educate  the  peasantry,  and  who  sigh  for  a  greater 
exploitation  of  Russian  commerce.  It  is  this :  that 
if  you  educate  the  peasant,  he  will  cease  to  want  to 
plough ;  if  you  dangle  before  his  eyes  the  tawdry 
recompenses  of  life  in  an  industrial  settlement,  he  will 
be  tempted  away.  The  peasants  are  happy  on  the 
land,  thanks  to  the  satisf3dng  popular  rites  of  their 
religion,  thanks  to  village  customs,  village  songs,  village 
sociability.  Do  not  pervert  them  en  masse.  They 
leave  the  land  in  quite  sufficient  numbers  to  nurture 
with  their  elemental  instincts  and  knowledge  of  mother 
earth  the  universities  and  the  arts.  It  is  a  barely 
credible  fact  that  even  to-day  Russia  is  falling  out  of 
cultivation,  and  twenty  per  cent,  more  of  her  land  is 
covered  with  forest  than  was  in  i860  —  owing  pri- 
marily to  the  liberation  of  the  serfs,  secondarily  to  the 
lack  of  interest  of  the  landowners  in  their  own  estates ; 
and  thirdly,  to  the  lust  of  the  peasants  for  industrial 
life. 

Russia  will  be  exploited  commercially  as  never  before. 
We  can  be  sure  of  that,  whatever  her  harvests  are.  She 
will  be  too  pressed  for  money  to  resist  that  exploitation. 


266  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

If  the  English  and  French  and  Belgians  are  clever 
enough,  Russia  and  Siberia  will  become  their  exclusive 
field.  Russia  has  a  great  deal  to  gain  by  friendly  co- 
operation with  these  peoples.  She  need  not,  indeed 
I  think  she  will  not,  throw  open  her  broad  lands  un- 
restrictedly to  commercial  and  mineral  exploitation. 
But  she  is  likely  to  grant  many  concessions. 

For  my  own  part,  I  view  foreign  exploitation  with  a 
great  deal  of  apprehension.  It  reacts  very  badly  on 
the  lives  of  the  peasants,  whose  best  function,  as  I 
have  said,  is  to  grow  bread.  It  creates  a  growing  dis- 
content in  the  minds  of  the  workmen  —  always  badly 
underpaid,  if  wages  be  compared  with  either  Western, 
European,  or  American  wages.  It  increases  immorahty 
and  vulgarity;  and,  more  than  that,  it  has  a  subtle 
influence  for  evil  upon  whole  countrysides.  Take  the 
life  of  the  foreign  mining  experts,  agents,  engineers, 
managers,  foremen,  sent  out  by  wealthy  corporations 
to  their  Russian  estates.  They  are  princes  of  Russian 
travel.  They  pay  the  biggest  fares,  the  biggest  tips, 
live  in  the  best  rooms  in  the  best  hotels,  make  the 
grandest  meals,  those  reserved  and  silent  men,  appar- 
ently uninterested  in  the  lower  life  around  them,  the 
men  who  sit  in  proud  isolation  in  first-class  carriages 
reading  "  John  Bull "  or  "Answers,"  scarcely  ever  looking 
out  at  the  windows;  or,  if  they  are  confronted  by  a 
native,  eyeing  him  with  a  sort  of  sportive  mirth  as  if 
he  had  escaped  from  a  show;    giving  importunate 


FUTURE   OF  THE   RUSSIAN   EMPIRE     267 

beggars  silver,  paying  anything  that  is  asked,  or  that 
they  dream  fitting  to  whomsoever  appears  to  have  a 
claim  upon  them.  When  they  get  to  the  mine  or  the 
factory  they  meet  their  confreres,  and  grumble  at  the 
lack  of  comforts  and  the  supposed  ferociousness  of  the 
natives;  they  order  from  distant  cities  fruits,  teas, 
biscuits,  wines,  what  not,  and  pay  double  and  treble 
prices  for  food,  lodging,  cooking,  service.  They  go 
about  with  revolvers  in  their  pockets,  they  pay  bribes 
to  the  wrong  people  —  always  paying  more  than  they 
need,  and  teaching  the  corrupt  to  expect  more  and  to 
demand  more.  They  teach  the  peasant  workmen, 
through  their  own  fear,  to  think  of  murder  and  robbery, 
teach  them  to  ask  higher  tips,  encourage  them  to 
grumble  about  wages  —  and  then,  when  a  vile  state  of 
affairs  has  been  created  on  a  countryside,  they  suddenly 
receive  orders  from  home  to  commence  an  era  of  re- 
trenchment, and  they  begin  to  reduce  wages  and  fight 
strikes  —  seldom  retrenching  in  their  own  expenditure. 
There  is  one  great  hope  :  it  is  that  sobriety  will  make 
the  peasant  workmen  stronger.  Where  vodka  shops 
have  been  closed  they  are  in  many  cases  to  be  opened 
as  schools.  Once  the  peasant  has  become  a  workman 
and  a  sober  workman  he  ought  to  be  set  upon  the  long 
road  of  education.  There  he  will  in  time  make  up  his 
losses.  High  ideals  should  be  set  before  the  workmen 
and  their  children.  They  should  be  made  to  feel  that 
learning  and  understanding  are  as  long  as  Hfe  itself  — 


268  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

are  indeed  life  itself.  It  is  rudimentary  education  and 
the  Universal  Panorama  and  short  cuts  to  knowledge 
that  are  dangerous.  The  Russian  peasant,  become  a 
workman,  is  capable  of  great  development.  From  the 
peasant  you  can  breed  a  noble  type,  witness  Shaliapin, 
the  kingly  actor  and  singer,  once  a  dock  labourer  at 
Batum,  now  able  to  forget  everything  else  and  fill  the 
role  of  Ivan  the  Terrible  or  of  Boris  Godunof.  The 
Russian  race  is  wonderfully  pure.  Serfdom  seems  to 
have  been  an  accident.  The  serfs  were  not  an  inferior 
race  or  a  different  race.  They  were,  in  blood  and  spirit 
and  instinct,  the  same  as  their  masters.  The  peasant 
to-day,  cultivated  and  carefully  bred,  would  make  a 
typical  Tsar.  Nevertheless,  as  I  said,  do  not  think  of 
educating  the  peasantry  en  masse.  Millions  would  halt 
at  the  perilous  halting  places  on  the  long  road  of 
education  and  would  so  go  to  perdition. 


VI 

The  Future  of  the  British  Empire 

The  wounds  in  our  trade,  in  the  ordinary  course  of 
things,  are  all  waiting  to  heal  over  and  be  as  before. 
After  the  war  comes  a  period  of  convalescence,  a  be- 
coming normal,  a  going-on.  But  England  must  not 
be  allowed  to  fall  asleep  again.  We  must  have  a  great 
England,  an  ideal,  worthy  of  that  vast  number  of  people 
who  speak  our  language  and  share  our  culture  and 
traditions.  Britain  must  reahse  herself  as  true  mistress 
of  the  seas  —  hospitable  mistress.  Let  us  live  more  on 
the  sea! 

Russia  and  Russia's  future  suggest  many  things. 
And  we  may  look  towards  Russia  in  order  to  see  our- 
selves better.  Though  I  do  not  suggest  any  rivalry 
between  the  British  and  Russian  Empires,  I  do  think 
we  should  do  well  to  compare  ourselves  and  learn  what 
we  can.  The  road  is  clear  before  Russia;  she  is  an 
all-on-land  Empire,  and  all  she  needs  to  do  is  to  build 
more  railways.  That  is  simple,  and  indeed  everything 
is  simple  for  her.  She  is  always  a  unity,  always 
organically  bound  together  as  one  thing,  and  she  is 
going  to  have  great  advantages  from  that  unity  and 
from  the  simpUcity  of  her  problems. 

269 


270  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

Our  destiny  is  on  the  sea.  Our  future  is  all  problems, 
the  sea  itself  being  a  problem.  We  also  have  to  become 
a  unity,  not  so  much  a  unity  of  colonies,  a  unity  of  land 
painted  red  on  the  map,  as  a  unity  of  peoples.  We 
must  not  continue  our  poKcy  of  letting  things  shape 
themselves  haphazard  and  trusting  to  racial  pride  and 
colonial  loyalty  to  keep  us  always  together.  We  have 
to  make  things  easier. 

Our  habit  as  Englishmen  has  been  to  concentrate 
our  attention  on  the  life  of  our  little  island  and  to  ignore 
the  life  of  the  colonies  as  if  it  were  something  second- 
rate  or  third-rate.  Even  in  this  hour  of  need  frequently 
we  hear,  in  answer  to  such  questions  as,  "Aren't  the 
Canadians  loyal?"  —  "Yes,  too  loyal;  "  or  "Did  you 
find  New  Zealand  loyal?"  —  "Oh  yes,  a  perfect  hot- 
bed of  loyalty."  That  is  unkind  to  our  brothers  out  of 
sight  and  out  of  mind,  and  it  is  bad  for  ourselves.  It 
is  not  even  a  true  sentiment,  nor  could  it  be  really  true. 

Imperialism  has  been  unfashionable  for  a  number  of 
years,  and  the  colonies  have  suffered  by  implication. 
We  have  given  our  colonists  powers  to  look  after  their 
own  affairs,  and  have  begun  to  regard  them  as  separate 
States.  We  have  taken  no  care  to  give  them  spiritual 
nourishment,  to  give  them  the  counsciousness  that  they 
are  part  of  something  very  large,  that  their  small 
destiny  is  part  of  a  much  greater  thing,  our  imperial 
destiny.  And  we  ourselves  have  also  learned  to  think 
small. 


FUTURE   OF   THE   BRITISH  EMPIRE     271 

If  we  are  to  counterbalance  the  Russian  Empire  we 
must  be  large.  We  cannot  balance  200,000,000  people 
spread  over  half  the  globe  by  60,000,000  huddled  to- 
gether on  our  little  island.  We  have  not  the  back- 
ground, we  have  not  a  large  enough  thought  in  our 
consciousness.  We  must  get  altogether  and  be  alto- 
gether. 

What  can  be  done? 

The  first  thing  that  occurs  to  me  from  my  wanderings 
in  the  Russian  Empire  is  that  we  have  to  make  the 
colonies  nearer.  We  have  got  to  think  nothing  of 
going  to  one  of  them  and  back.  We  have  got  to  ex- 
change readily  thoughts,  books,  people.  We  have  been 
more  interested  in  the  United  States  than  in  our 
colonies.  In  a  sense,  interest  in  the  States  has  come 
between  us  and  interest  in  the  people  of  our  colonies. 
We  have  to  realise  that  the  United  States  is  not  one 
of  our  colonies  but  a  foreign  country  with  foreign 
interests.  For  the  rest,  we  have  to  make  bridges  to 
Canada,  Australia,  South  Africa,  New  Zealand,  India. 

We  need  the  Government  to  institute  a  State  service 
of  steamboats  between  the  colonies  and  the  mother- 
land, not  try  to  make  them  pay,  but  to  make  of  them 
public  bridges  between  our  far-off  lands  and  ourselves. 
It  should  be  possible  for  £1  to  go  anywhere  in  the 
British  Empire,  and  we  would  pay  for  our  meals  as  we 
wanted  them,  according  to  a  tariff. 

Such  an  institution  would  be  an  immense  gain.     We 


272  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

have  made  transatlantic  travel  into  a  bit  of  snobbery. 
We  have  got  to  make  the  journeys  on  the  sea  unimpor- 
tant and  ordinary. 

Quite  obviously  we  diminished  the  cost  of,  postage 
from  a  shilling  to  a  penny  in  order  that  there  might  be 
a  greater  circulation  of  personal  opinion  and  intelli- 
gence, and  we  had  great  gain.     We  diminished  the 
price  of  newspapers  from  threepence  to  a  penny  or  a 
halfpenny  in  order  that  we  might  have  more  circulation. 
It  is  all  to  our  advantage,  and  much  more  to  our  advan- 
tage, to  increase  the  circulation  of  the  people  of  our 
Empire  by  removing  the  prohibitive  prices  that  we 
have  to  pay  in  order  to  cross  from  one  land  to  another. 
The  citizens  of  the  British  Empire  want  some  privi- 
leges.    They  have  not  many  more  privileges  at  present 
than  if  they  were  Turks  or  Chinamen.     We  want  im- 
perial confidence,  we  want  to  feel  at  home  in  the  world 
and  to  go  readily  from  one  part  to  another.     How 
greatly  we  should  all  gain  by  a  quickening  of  our 
circulation  and  a  sense  of  our  organic  unity,  by  feeling 
that  the  distant  limbs  of  the  body  poHtic  responded  to 
the  impulse  of  the  brain  and  the  action  of  the  heart. 
There  is  nothing  to  fear  in  the  realisation  of  our 
Empire.     Our  days  of  aggressive  Imperialism  are  over. 
We  are  ready  to  take  over  a  desert  here  and  there  or 
occasionally  to  organise  the  government  of  some  tribe 
that  cannot  govern  itself,  but  we  are  not  going  to  en- 
slave other  nations  or  seize  their  land  in  order  to  ex- 


FUTURE   OF   THE   BRITISH   EMPIRE     273 

ploit  it  for  ourselves.  We  have  more  territory  than  we 
have  people,  or  can  have  people  for  many  a  hundred 
year  to  come.  We  have  to  go  forward  in  love,  not  in 
distrust  or  jealousy. 

We  look  to  those  who  come  back  from  the  war, 
those  who  have  been  touched  by  reahty  and  the  face  of 
death,  the  great  force  that  should  come  into  our  stag- 
nant national  Hfe,  bringing  the  quiet  but  potent 
thoughts  dreamed  out  on  the  battlefield  or  sworn  in 
the  moment  of  danger  and  distress.  These  will  bring 
their  true  passion  to  the  making  of  the  new  life,  the 
making  of  a  good  peace  and  the  shaping  of  the  future 
of  our  Empire. 


VII 

Naturalisation 

The  war  has  raised  in  an  urgent  form  the  question 
of  naturalisation.  Have  the  British  not  been  very 
slovenly  and  careless  in  the  granting  of  the  precious 
right  of  nationality  ?  Why  should  Russians,  Germans, 
Poles,  Jews,  Italians,  and  what  not  have  the  right  to 
be  considered  British  subjects,  our  own  people  ?  It  is 
much  better  that  Germans  remain  Germans  to  the 
end  of  the  chapter.  God  made  the  Germans  Germans 
as  He  made  the  black  man  black,  German  they  should 
remain.  Jews  also  should  be  Jews.  In  Russia  a  Jew 
becomes  a  Russian  only  when  he  gives  up  the  Jewish 
faith  and  is  baptised.  In  England  also  Christianity 
should  be  a  compulsory  qualification  for  complete 
nationalisation.  Every  man  should  have  his  papers 
of  identity. 

In  America  of  course  it  is  different.  The  Americans 
are  not  yet  a  nation  —  in  America  a  nation  is  being  put 
together  and  established.  But  in  Europe  the  nations 
are  formed,  they  are  sharply  defined.  Peace  when  it 
is  accomplished  will  be  on  strictly  national  principles. 
The  territory  that  is  really  German  will  remain  German ; 

274 


NATURALISATION  275 

that  which  was  French  will  become  French  again ;  that 
which  was  Polish  will  return  to  Poland.  Therefore, 
the  individuals  in  England  who  are  really  Germans 
should  be  made  Germans  again  and  the  Poles  who  are 
really  Poles  should  be  returned  to  Poland  and  so  on. 
If  that  retrospective  view  of  individual  rights  is  difficult 
to  enforce,  provision  can  at  least  be  made  for  the  future 
that  nationalities  may  be  purer  and  that  Poles  and  Jews 
may  be  given  passports  of  Polish  and  Jewish  national- 
ity, and  that  Germans  be  stopped  masquerading  as 
British. 

The  whole  Liberal  principle  of  the  rights  of  indivi- 
duals and  of  nations  to  be  themselves  and  to  realise 
their  true  individual  and  national  destinies  is  boundjip 
in  this  question  of  naturalisation.  Liberalism  is  not 
chaotic  freedom  but  ordered  freedom.  It  is  true  free- 
dom. It  not  only  sets  free  but  it  safeguards.  The 
compulsory  cessation  of  promiscuous  nationalisation 
is  a  great  safeguard  of  the  rights  of  individuals  and  of 
nations. 


VIII 

Conscription 

A  HAUNTING  question  of  the  day  is :  will  there  be 
conscription  after  the  war  ?  Before  the  war  a  powerful 
party,  led  by  Lord  Roberts  and  ministered  to  by  Lord 
Northcliffe,  wanted  it,  but  the  overwhelming  mass  of 
the  people  were  against  it.  Liberals  and  Sociahsts  were 
against  it  en  bloc,  many  Conservatives  and  also  the  man 
in  the  street.  But  the  war  has  shown  how  great  was 
the  necessity  for  a  large  army.  We  have  had  to  equip 
and  train  a  million  men  in  a  terrible  hurry  and  have  not 
had  clothes  for  them  to  wear  or  guns  for  them  to 
shoot  with  or  horses  to  put  under  them.  And  now  we 
realise  that  it  would  have  been  better  to  have  prepared 
our  army  earlier,  better  for  us,  better  for  the  brave  men 
who  go  to  fill  up  death-gaps  in  the  line  of  our  regular 
army. 

Among  Socialists  have  sprung  up  many  conscription- 
ists,  and  Bernard  Shaw  is  able  to  call  for  conscription 
for  this  reason  —  that  since  men  may  be  forced  to  serve 
the  state  in  time  of  war,  they  may  also  be  forced 
to  serve  it  in  time  of  peace.  He  would  have  those  men 
shot  who  in  his  opinion  avoid  serving  the  State. 

276 


CONSCRIPTION  277 

Wells,  on  the  other  hand,  wishes  every  man  to  be 
familiar  with  the  use  of  the  gun,  and  to  be  able  to 
defend  his  home  and  his  countryside  whenever  occasion 
arises.  The  working  men  and  the  discontented  would 
then  have  material  power  when  they  were  organised  to 
rebel.  Strikes  would  become  civil  wars.  The  rich  and 
those  who  are  now  powerful  would  find  their  position 
much  less  secure.  Incidentally,  we  should,  of  course, 
be  much  more  formidable  in  resisting  an  enemy  invading 
our  shores. 

The  Quakers,  the  Tolstoyans,  the  Plymouth  Breth- 
ren, and  other  quiet  but  none  the  less  powerful  com- 
munities are  altogether  opposed  to  the  use  of  material 
force,  and  they  could  not  be  compelled  individually 
to  bear  arms.  By  English  tradition  we  should  be  forced 
to  grant  exemption  to  those  whose  conscience  forbade 
them  to  raise  the  sword.  The  consequence  would  be 
that  most  of  those  who  were  not  Quakers  but  who  for 
ulterior  reasons  did  not  wish  to  serve,  would  be  con- 
verted nominally  to  Quakerism  or  Tolstoyism  or  the 
like,  and  would  so  escape,  putting  the  onus  and  the 
handicap  on  to  those  straightforward  Englishmen  who 
did  not  seek  to  evade  the  hard  year  or  two  years  of 
training. 

But  the  question  of  whether  we  shall  have  a  form 
of  conscription  or  not  is  likely  to  become  a  deadly 
poHtical  quarrel  before  it  can  be  resolved.  Liberals 
view  with  apprehension  the  coming  of  a  military  caste 


278  RUSSIA  AND   THE  WORLD 

and  the  rising  military  contempt  for  civilians.  They 
fear  the  uniform,  the  sign  of  the  sword,  the  distinguish- 
ing marks  of  the  new  mihtary  aristocracy.  They  know 
that  an  aristocracy  founded  on  military  rank  is  more 
difficult  to  overthrow  than  the  old  aristocracy  founded 
on  estates  or  money  or  tradition.  They  also  say:  Is 
not  the  German  war  the  last  war,  did  we  not  fight  it  so 
wholeheartedly  because  we  felt  it  was  not  the  Germans 
so  much  that  we  were  fighting  as  war  itself  ?  Has  not 
our  victory  over  the  Germans  been  a  victory  over  war  ? 
Why,  then,  should  we  on  the  day  of  peace  set  out  to 
prepare  for  wars  to  come,  to  attract  by  increased  armies 
the  fear  and  hate  of  other  countries? 

No  one  is  Hkely  to  answer  these  questions.  We 
know,  nearly  all  of  us,  that  the  idea  of  a  last  war  was 
merely  one  of  the  bluffs  of  the  beginning  of  the  war, 
a  pretext,  a  recruiting  fiction,  something  to  fill  green 
young  men  with  a  high  moral  fervour.  It  was  wrong 
to  say  it  perhaps,  but  it  was  said. 

Alas,  revenge  is  always  heaping  itself  up !  Material 
force  is  the  insolvable  quantity.  Even  in  Britain,  which 
has  had  the  smallest  army  and  has  prized  peace  most, 
the  indignation  of  the  people  is  put  down  with  armed 
force,  and  we  could  not  settle  such  a  dispute  as  that 
between  Ulster  and  the  rest  of  Ireland  without  arming 
the  parties.  Hate  is  always  gathering  to  centres  and 
discharging  itself.  Nameless  hate  is  in  the  air,  and  we 
capture  it  for  ourselves  and  give  it  the  name  of  our 


CONSCRIPTION  279 

private  quarrels.  Even  the  pacifist  Daily  News,  in  the 
glut  of  national  discord  and  fighting,  summons  Lord 
Northcliffe  to  battle,  charging  him  with  appealing  to  our 
lower  instincts,  whilst  it  itself  is  actually  appealing  to  the 
fighting  instinct  in  him,  trying  to  get  him  to  throw  back 
words  of  abuse.  There  is  a  desire  for  fighting  hidden  in 
the  breasts  of  everyone  except  a  few  ascetics  and  saints 
and  poets  in  every  nation,  except  in  a  few  tribes  of  tent- 
dwellers,  nomads,  or  cavemen.  Under  the  crust  even  of 
America  lies  sleeping  force,  the  desire  and  the  need  to 
burst  forth  and  fight  and  devour,  like  the  fire  in  the 
depths  of  the  earth. 

"What,  then,  of  Christ's  promise?"  ask  the  Tol- 
stoyans  and  the  Quakers  and  the  Plymouth  Brothers. 
"What  chance  has  Christianity  of  coming  to  any- 
thing?" 

My  answer  is  :  every  chance.  Christianity  is  not  for 
nations,  it  is  for  individuals.  It  is  an  individual  under- 
standing. It  is  not  a  rule.  It  is  a  personal  choice. 
The  peace  that  Christianity  gives  is  the  inner  peace, 
the  peace  in  the  depths  of  the  heart  even  when  the 
outer  world  is  full  of  war.  In  fact,  the  greater  the 
tumult  of  the  outside  world  the  greater  is  the  miracle 
of  Christianity.  As  the  promise  says:  "My  peace  I 
give  unto  you :  not  as  the  world  giveth,  give  I  unto 
you." 

The  Tennysonian  and  Victorian  — 

"The  Earth  at  last  a  warless  world" 


28o  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

is  a  popularisation  of  Christianity,  and  much  easier  to 
give  assent  to,  and  to  work  for,  than  the  truer 
"The  heart  at  last  a  peaceful  heart." 

But  to  turn  from  the  individual  back  again  to  the 
world,  I  think  that  when  the  war  is  over  we  shall  indeed 
set  to  work  to  maintain  a  larger  army  and  give  more 
opportunities  to  youth  to  ride  and  shoot  and  perform 
the  manly  exercises.  We  ought  to  popularise  imperial 
service  and  give  facilities  to  our  young  men  and  women 
to  see  the  Empire,  and  work  for  periods  at  different 
points  in  it.  We  need  to  make  imperial  service  more 
interesting,  we  need  to  make  it  as  interesting  as  it  really 
is.  We  need  to  Say  nationally  and  individually  that 
position  in  life  is  not  the  first  thing,  earning  a  Hvingis  not 
the  first  thing,  commerce  is  not  the  first  thing,  that  all 
these  things  are  added  if  you  have  first  the  will  to  serve 
an  ideal.  No  compulsion  upon  individuals  is  in  keeping 
with  the  British  spirit  of  freedom.  But  the  prospect 
of  imperial  service  should  be  so  glorious  that  everyone 
should  wish  to  come  in  of  his  own  free  will,  and  Quakers 
and  Tolstoyans  who  wished  not  to  carry  the  gun  might 
still  find  an  immense  amount  of  scope  on  the  positive 
side  in  the  making  of  bridges  and  the  carrying  of  the 
messages  of  love  and  interest  from  one  part  of  the 
British  Empire  to  another.  Once  more  we  look  to 
those  who  come  back  from  the  war  to  give  us,  from  their 
hearts,  the  wisdom  which  they  have  learned  in  the  hours 
of  facing  death  for  their  country. 


V 
LAST   THOUGHTS 


V.     LAST  THOUGHTS 

I 

Petrograd 

I  HAVE  been  in  St.  Petersburg  for  the  first  time  in  my 
life,  or  rather  I  have  never  been  in  St.  Petersburg  at 
all,  I  have  only  been  in  Petrograd.  Although  I  have 
been  almost  everywhere  else  in  the  Russian  Empire  I 
have  always  avoided  the  capital,  expecting  no  pleasure 
there,  no  revelation  of  Russia.  And  wherever  I  have 
gone  in  Russia  people  have  solemnly  advised  me  that  it 
would  never  be  worth  while  to  go  to  St.  Petersburg,  and 
they  have  rejoiced  to  hear  that  I  never  intended  to  go. 
As  Merezhkovsky  wrote:  ''The  life  of  St.  Petersburg 
is  the  death  of  Russia,  and  conversely  the  death  of 
St.  Petersburg  might  be  the  life  of  Russia."  Behold, 
St.  Petersburg  is  dead  !  Petrograd  has  taken  its  place. 
As  the  poet  Aksakoff  wrote : 

"Its  name  was  a  foreign  one ; 
That's  why  we  never  remember  it." 

When  first  the  new  name  was  spoken  it  seemed  annoy- 
ing that  it  should  rhyme  with  retrograd,  but  the  pun  was 
not  apposite.  The  name  St.  Petersburg  sounds  sinis- 
ter, grown  old  in  sin ;  nothing  sounds  more  childlike, 
yoimg  and  simple  than  Petrograd. 

283 


284  RUSSIA  AND   THE  WORLD 

The  sun  did  not,  however,  shine  on  Petrograd  for 
me,  nor  did  the  new  sentiment  transfigure  the  dreariness 
and  sordidness  of  the  great  city.     A  moving  mist  was 
driving  over  the  house-tops,  and  through  it  came  a 
drizzle  of  finest  snow  or  rain.     The  raw,  penetrating 
air  made  one  nervously  cold.     The  streets  were  wet 
and  slippery,  and  the  wood  pavements  were  old  and 
worn  and  muddy.     Every  passer-by  was  muffled  and 
silent.     I  went  down  the  vaunted  Nevski  Prospect, 
one  of  the  greatest  streets  of  the  world.     Its  houses, 
shops  and  blocks  are  of  unharmonised  heights  and 
colours,  disorderly  in  bulk  and  in  design,  with  no  spaces 
between  the  houses,  and  with  window-fronts  greedily 
absorbent  of  wall.     Such  an  anomaly  as  the  Singer 
building,  an  American  advertisement  in  stone,  can  find 
a  place  in  the  same  road  with  the  covered  arcades  that 
take  their  inspiration  from  the  bazars  of  the  East,  and 
with  great  blocks  of  Government  buildings  the  colour 
of  fire-glow  in  the  sky  or  of  muddy  water  mixed  with 
blood.     It  is  a  fine,  long,  straight,  flat,  wide  street  with 
electric  standards  along  the  middle,  with  car  lines  each 
side  of  the  standards  and  red-striped  trams  pottering 
along,  with  diversified  bunches  of  horse  droschkies  trot- 
ting forward,  with  coughing,  swift-moving  motor-cars, 
and   antique    baronial    carriages    having    scarlet-clad 
coachmen  sitting  on  their  boxes.      Bits  of  the  street 
feel  Hke  Paris,  bits  hke  the  East  end  of  London,  bits 
like  Broadway,  New  York,  but  collectively  it  is  some- 


PETROGRAD  285 

thing  unique,  something  sinister  and  gloomy,  brutal 
and  out  of  date. 
''  It  is  the  city  of  Dostoieff sky's  novels,  the  scene 
especially  of  Crime  and  Punishment  and  the  nightmares 
of  Raskolnikof.  It  is  the  scene  of  that  wonderful, 
tender  novel  Injured  and  Insulted,  the  scene  also  of  Le 
Double,  where  the  hypochondriac,  leaning  tired  against 
a  bridge  over  one  of  the  canals,  saw  himself  go  past 
himself  in  the  driving  blizzard  of  snow.  What  sin 
there  has  been  in  this  city,  what  meanness,  sordidness, 
unhappiness !  This  hitherto  half- German  city  !  Six- 
teen thousand  Germans  were  sent  out  of  it  in  one  week 
whilst  I  was  there.  St.  Petersburg  —  Petrograd ;  yes, 
it  is  good  tidings. 

There  has  been  a  much  stronger  German  influence 
there  than  in  London.  Germans  at  court,  Germans  in 
business,  above  all  things  Germans  or  naturalised  Ger- 
mans in  the  secret  police.  They  should  get  rid  of 
them  all;  denaturalise  and  disenfranchise  those  who 
are  Russian  subjects.  They  have  been  poisoning  the 
national  life.  They  are  a  great  danger  to  the  State. 
Their  intrigues  and  machinations  are  words  now,  but  if 
not  checked  might  amount  to  actions  later  on.  The 
Tsar's  life  is  especially  precious  at  this  moment,  not 
only  to  Russia  but  to  England  and  France.  He  has 
come  out  unreservedly  as  the  leader  of  his  people  and 
the  promulgator  of  the  war.  He  has  trebled  the 
strength  of  his  army  by  the  vodka  ukase  and  by  his 


286  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

consistently  strong  decisive  personal  behaviour.  And 
all  the  while  he  has  the  haunting  personal  sorrow  — 
the  weakness  of  his  heir.  It  is  difficult  to  view  with 
calm  the  presence  at  Petrograd  of  such  men  as  the 
notorious  Reinbot,  once  chief  of  the  Moscow  police. 
May  the  capital  have  a  complete  purge  ! 

My  eyes  discover  the  dead  St.  Petersburg.  I  go  to 
Vassily  Island  where  poor  Dostoieffsky  Hved  in  poverty. 
The  dank  and  dirty  water  of  the  Neva  and  the  canals 
suggests  the  suicide  to  my  mind.  But  though  the  dead 
past  is  so  evident  the  young  present  is  also  insistent. 
Petrograd  is  there.  The  spirit  shops  are  sealed.  Half  the 
private-chamber  restaurants  are  shut.  In  all  shops  and 
pubHc  places  there  are  notices  up  requesting  you  not 
to  speak  German.  Bright-faced  yoimg  men  and  women 
dart  about  with  picture  post  cards  and  newspapers, 
and  call  to  you  as  you  pass  by,  "Buy  the  news  for  warm 
clothing."  At  first  you  do  not  understand,  but  later 
you  learn  that  the  proceeds  of  the  sales  go  to  provide 
warm  clothing  for  the  men  at  the  front.  Then  you 
understand  the  large  placard  everywhere  extiibited, 
the  touching  reminder  to  the  townsfolk  of  the  capital. 
Everywhere  you  go  you  see  the  words 

it's  cold  in  the  trenches 

There  are  five  or  six  new  evening  newspapers  on  the 
streets,  and  they  are  bought  na  raskvat,  like  hot  pies. 
Crowds  stand  all  day  outside  the  offices  of  the  Novoe 


PETROGRAD  287 

Vremya  watching  for  the  new  telegrams,  which,  as 
soon  as  they  are  received,  are  posted  up.  There  is 
tremendous  interest  in  the  daily  news,  especially 
in  the  doings  of  the  Russian  Army  and  of  the  British 
Fleet.  Away  in  the  background  somewhere  the  Tsar 
waits  for  news  also,  and  receives  it  first  of  all  before 
any  of  his  people,  and  if  it  is  great  news  he  orders  that 
it  be  given  out  at  once.  Then  all  the  papers  come  out 
with  extra  sheets,  and  in  the  theatres  the  favourites 
of  the  crowd  come  forward  and  stop  the  orchestra. 
''One  moment,  one  moment,  please;  a  great  victory 
in  Poland.  .  .  .     God  save  the  Tsar ! " 


II 

Returning  from  Russia  to  England 

As  I  had  determined  to  return  to  London  for  a  while 
I  had  to  come  to  Petrograd.  There  I  had  to  decide 
whether  I  would  take  the  risk  of  the  Scandinavian 
route,  or  whether  I  would  go  to  Archangel  and  return 
on  a  New  York  liner  that  called  at  Liverpool.  By 
most  accounts  the  North  Sea  was  closed,  and  there  was 
no  traffic  between  Norway  and  England  except  by 
boats  going  north  of  Iceland.  However,  the  ticket 
agents  averred  that  the  way  was  still  open,  and  I  be- 
lieved them,  and  they  were  right.  Still,  it  was  a  most 
difficult  and  unpleasant  journey,  full  of  unexpected 
vexations  and  troublous  doubts,  relieved  only  by  the 
hope  and  the  coming  joy  of  seeing  my  country  again. 

Into  the  fast  Finnish  train  starting  so  late  one  night 
from  Petrograd,  and  away  towards  the  Gulf  of  Bothnia 
shore,  the  engine  screaming  like  a  sea-gull !  The  train 
runs  all  night  long,  and  in  the  morning  we  emerge  into 
a  new  country  with  a  new  landscape  —  Finland.  A 
melancholy  and  yet  beautiful  country. 

Snow-covered  fields,  cold  wooden  houses  with 
pointed  gables,  red-painted  chalets,  an  upland  country 
on  which  Jack  Frost  has  breathed.     Vast   shadowy 

288 


RETURNING   TO   ENGLANT)  289 

lakes  to  which  the  lowering  and  tumultuous  black 
sky  leans  down.  There  is  a  sadness  beyond  words,  but 
it  is  a  country  to  love  tenderly.  Far  away  lies  the 
black  other  side  of  the  lake  looking  like  the  end  of 
the  lake's  life.  We  love  things  that  are  limited  —  aU 
mortal  things  Kke  flowers,  humans,  Kttle  lakes  —  much 
more  than  we  love  stars,  gods,  seas.  We  are  tender 
to  all  that  dies,  that  has  an  ending  or  a  limit  or  another 
side. 

It  is  an  indi\ddual  country  this  Finland.  The  high 
white  stone  buildings,  compact,  many-pointed,  bleak, 
are  a  reflection  of  jaggedness  and  ice.  There  is  also 
a  jaggedness  in  people's  faces. 

An  accurate  people  the  Finns,  efficient,  orderly, 
Protestant.  They  have  their  backs  to  Russia  and  look 
towards  Germany  and  Scandinavia.  One  feels  that 
they  have  a  national  destiny  within  the  Russian  Empire. 
It  was  worth  while  to  get  a  ghmpse  of  the  people,  if  only 
on  a  two-day  journey  in  their  country. 

We  had  to  stay  forty-two  hours  at  Raumo  on  the 
coast  —  the  port  of  embarkation  for  Sweden.  We 
arrived  at  four  in  the  afternoon,  and  instead  of  the  train 
proceeding  direct  to  the  harbour  it  stopped  at  the  town. 
We  were  informed  that  the  three  Swedish  boats  in  the 
harbour  were  packed  with  Germans  thrown  out  of 
Russia.  We  should  have  to  go  to  an  hotel.  The 
hotels  were  all  fuU ;  it  was  necessary  to  seek  a  hostess 
in  a  private  house. 


290  RUSSIA  AND   THE   WORLD 

Next  morning,  while  it  was  yet  dark,  we  had  to  get 
up,  hire  sledges,  and  pelt  through  a  bhnding  snowstorm 
to  the  pier,  where  a  boat  was  supposed  to  be  waiting  for 
us.  At  the  pier  we  found  yesterday's  steamer  still 
loading  and  in  no  huriy  to  go  out.  A  boat  would  come 
for  us  some  time  in  the  afternoon.  Meanwhile  our 
trunks  were  opened  and  all  correspondence  was  seized 
and  examined  so  as  to  prevent  letters  being  taken 
abroad  "behind  the  Censor's  back."  A  boat  came  in 
and  we  were  given  cabins.  Next  day,  about  eleven 
o'clock  in  the  morning,  we  steamed  out  of  the  harbour, 
led  by  a  pilot. 

What  a  boat  that  was  I  It  was  packed  with  German 
refugees  from  stem  to  stern.  Germans  on  the  decks, 
in  all  the  passages,  in  the  saloons  and  eating-rooms, 
crying,  shouting,  jesting.  Directly  we  got  out  of 
Russian  waters  it  was  possible  to  buy  lager  beer  and 
spirits,  and  the  Germans  appreciated  the  situation. 
As  one  old  drunken  fellow  said  : 

"Im  Petersburg  nicht  wodka,  nicht  bier,  nicht 
schnapps,  nicht  wein,  nicht  nitchevo  niet." 

All  food  and  drink  in  the  boat  was,  however,  at  star- 
vation price,  and  the  Swedes  spoke  no  language  but 
their  own,  and  gave  wrong  change. 


We  arrived  at  Stockholm,  a  bright  and  stately  city, 
at  three  in  the  morning,  and  submitted  to  the  Swedish 


RETURNING  TO  ENGLAND  291 

Customs.  The  German  refugees  were  met  by  the  rep- 
resentatives of  their  own  nation  and  by  a  dozen  motor- 
cars. They  were  packed  into  the  cars,  a  dozen  in  each, 
and  taken  off  to  some  EvangeKsche  Mission  to  have  hot 
coffee  and  sleep  a  few  hours.  At  4.30  a.m.  the  Customs 
closed  and  I  took  a  taxi-cab  to  the  locked  railway 
station ;  after  some  banging  I  was  admitted  by  a  porter. 
The  train  to  Christiania  went  at  8.38  a.m.  This  train 
had  only  second  and  third  class  compartments,  but  I 
travelled  with  two  Russians  who  had  booked  first-class 
tickets.  We  telegraphed  to  Christiania  to  reserve 
seats  in  the  next  train  to  Bergen,  but  arrived  two  hours 
late  and  had  to  spend  the  night  at  Christiania. 

Christiania  seemed  a  much  dirtier  city  than  London, 
if  London  were  all  East  End.  Its  traffic  is  horse  traffic, 
and  the  streets  seem  to  be  seldom  cleaned.  There  was 
a  pea-soup  London  fog  and  a  penetrating  raw  air. 

Next  day,  after  a  night  in  a  cold  hotel,  I  was  informed 
that  all  second-class  seats  in  the  Bergen  train  were 
taken.  I  had  no  objection  to  third  class,  so  long  as 
I  got  there ;  but  I  was  rather  amused  to  find  that  I 
must  pay  six  crowns  for  a  sleeping  berth  in  the  third 
class,  even  though  I  had  a  second-class  ticket.  Next 
to  me  in  this  train  was  a  Chinese  British  subject  from 
Hong  Kong.  He  had  a  first-class  ticket,  and  had 
paid  something  hke  £1  5s.  extra  for  the  privilege  of 
going  in  a  third-class  sleeping  car.  True,  they  had 
given  him  a  carriage  to  himself.     But  then  that  rich 


292  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

Chinaman  was  tapped  in  an  extraordinary  way ;  money 
flowed  from  him  Hke  water  at  every  place  he  changed. 

«  4c  *  *  *  *  4c 

At  Bergen  things  were  a  little  better.  We  all  got 
the  cabins  for  which  we  had  tickets.  But  the  more 
dangerous  part  of  the  journey  commenced.  The  danger 
to  civilians  was  a  Httle  heightened  by  the  fact  that  we 
had  on  board  five  British  naval  officers  and  fifty  marines, 
who  had  been  wrecked  off  the  coast  of  Norway,  but 
had  managed  to  leave  the  country  as  civihans.  They 
momentarily  expected  the  approach  of  a  German 
cruiser,  and,  indeed,  knew  that  there  was  a  German 
submarine  near  Stavanger  that  had  intelligence  of  their 
movements.  At  Stavanger  they  were  all  ordered  to  keep 
to  their  cabins,  and  not  show  their  faces  for  a  moment 
above  deck. 

It  was  rough  weather.  There  were  only  three  women 
passengers.  We  saw  the  noses  of  several  floating 
mines.  Many  people  slept  in  their  life-belts,  and  we 
all  balanced  the  idea  of  a  sudden  explosion,  and  a 
plunge  into  the  cold  sea,  or  a  rush  to  the  boats.  We 
were  forty-eight  hours  on  the  sea,  and  the  last  morning 
was  one  of  mist  and  fog-horns.  British  torpedo-boats 
rushed  past  us  like  monsters  with  their  tails  in  the  sea. 
Black  torpedo-destroyers  steamed  round  us.  At  last 
Tynemouth  became  visible  like  a  shadow,  the  fleet 
enclosed  us,  a  Httle  boat  drew  up  to  us,  and  a  man,  with 
his  hands  to  his  mouth,  cried  out  in  a  stentorian  voice  : 


RETURNING  TO  ENGLAND  293 

"  Get  your  passports  ready !  '* 

The  Russians  on  board  at  once  fumbled  in  their 
pockets  for  their  passports.  It  was  a  famihar  order  to 
them.  The  British  officers  below,  now  in  their  uni- 
forms, drank  champagne.  The  sick  recovered  at  the 
thought  of  England. 

"Any  revolvers,  any  letters  you  are  trying  to  take 
past  the  Censor,  anything  to  declare  ?  What  is  your 
occupation?  What  have  you  been  doing  in  Russia? 
What  is  your  English  address?" 

"You  can  go." 

Yes.    Dear   England  once   again.    Newcastle,   the 
Scotch  express,  London,  dark  London.     My  word,  how 
dark !    How  difficult  to  get  there  from  Russia! 
******* 

Britain  is  great  on  the  sea.  All  sea  adventures  touch 
us,  and  even  the  smallest  details  of  the  life  of  our  men 
are  interesting.  How  tantalising  it  is  that  the  present 
vast  activity  of  our  fleet  and  the  men  on  it  is  without 
its  story.  The  only  time  when  news  becomes  explicit  is 
when  we  are  told  that  a  ship  has  been  sunk  and  some 
of  our  brave  fellows  are  dead.  I  have  here  a  true  story 
of  one  of  the  shipwrecked  naval  officers  whom  we  took 
on  board  on  my  journey  home  from  Bergen  to  New- 
castle. It  gives  an  idea  of  the  strangeness  and  pathos 
and  almost  feverish  activity  of  the  lives  of  all  our  gallant 
sailors  in  this  war. 

On  the  first  afternoon  when  I  came  aboard  I  v  as 


294  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

surprised  to  see  among  the  passengers  one  Englishman 
wearing  a  Russian  fur  hat  and  another  with  an  Arch- 
angel reindeer  coat.  There  were  several  civihans  who 
kept  gathering  in  knots,  talking  mysteriously  and  then 
separating  whenever  anyone  came  near  them.  When 
questioned  as  to  where  they  had  come  from  they  talked 
vaguely  of  the  beauty  of  Mexico  and  then  of  the  fiords, 
hinting  that  if  there  were  light  they  would  hke  to  take 
some  snapshots  at  Stavanger. 

They  were  a  captain  and  officers  who  had  been  on 
the  ill-fated  W which  sunk  off  the  North  of  Nor- 
way, and  they  were  disguised  as  civihans  in  case  a  Ger- 
man cruiser  should  come  up  and  revise  our  passengers 
and  cargo.  Not  until  we  had  been  twelve  hours  out 
at  sea  did  they  let  us  others  know  their  story. 

They  had  escorted  the  Canadian  ice-breakers  to 
Archangel,  the  ice-breakers  that  it  was  hoped  would 
keep  the  Great  Northern  port  open  all  the  winter.  At 
Archangel  they  had  waited  five  weeks,  always  expecting 
to  be  returning  on  the  morrow.  At  last  they  got  orders 
to  sail  as  passengers  on  the  British  tramp  steamer 
W .  Seven  days  after  leaving  Archangel  the  cap- 
tain of  the  W entrusted  his  ship  to  an  uncertificated 

pilot  —  the  latter  led  them  over  a  sunken  rock. 

It  was  at  supper  time,  when  everyone  was  gaily  chat- 
ting and  eating,  that  the  crash  came  and  the  whole 
bottom  of  the  ship  went  to  shivers.  Everyone  thought 
they  had  struck  a  mine.     The  passengers  darted  to 


RETURNING  TO   ENGLAND  295 

their  cabins  and  put  on  their  life-belts,  and  stepped  off 
the  vessel  into  the  ice  and  snow  of  the  sea.  A  light- 
house was  near  and  they  scrambled  over  ledges  and 
let  themselves  down  over  icy  precipices  into  pools  of 
melting  ice  and  icy  water,  and  so  reached  the  shelter. 
For  twenty-fom*  hours  they  shivered  on  this  hghthouse 
and  sent  up  rockets.  At  last  a  Norwegian  post  boat 
hailed  them  and  took  them  off  to  Trondhjem,  where 
they  were  at  once  put  under  arrest.  Eventually  they 
were  allowed  to  return  to  England  —  thanks  to  the 
courtesy  of  the  Norwegian  Government.  All  the  British 
naval  men  were  saved  and  not  only  they  but  the  cap- 
tain's black  cat,  Tim.  Tim  was  a  great  favourite 
on  our  journey  from  Bergen  to  Newcastle,  and  many 
of  the  sailors  thought  our  safety  depended  absolutely 
upon  him. 

The  officers  were  some  of  the  most  interesting 
Englishmen  I  have  met,  gentle,  calm,  firm,  never  vulgar. 
I  reaHsed  that  in  such  men  as  they  lay  Britain's  true 
strength.  My  especial  friend  of  the  journey  was  a 
young  lieutenant  who  was  most  eager  for  England  and 
the  Empire.  Above  all  things  he  admired  Canada 
and  the  spirit  of  the  Canadians,  and  he  promised  him- 
self that  when  the  war  was  over  he  would  marry  and 
settle  down  in  British  Columbia.  I  wish  London 
would  always  remember  that  when  one  of  her  sons 
leaves  her  and  goes  to  a  place  Hke  British  Columbia, 
he  is  not  lost  to  Britain :   he  belongs  to  Britain  even 


296  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

more  out  there  than  he  could  at  home.  His  heart 
beats  for  her ;  his  arm  is  ready  at  her  service. 

"We  were  off  the  shore  of  Mexico  when  the  war 
broke  out,"  said  he.  "We  received  orders  to  proceed 
at  once  to  Victoria,  B.C.  I  was  very  glad.  My 
sweetheart  lives  there,  and  we  have  been  engaged  two 
years.  I  thought  'now  is  my  chance,  we'll  get  married 
at  once.'  But  when  I  got  to  Victoria  another  order 
was  awaiting  us.  We  had  eight  hours  in  which  to  pack 
our  things  to  go  to  Halifax.  I  saw  my  girl  for  just 
one  hour  before  departure.  But  I  thought,  'Halifax  is 
not  far,  I  can  come  back  and  marry  her.'  But  when 
we  got  to  HaKfax  what  was  my  astonishment  to  find 
that  we  were  under  orders  to  proceed  at  once  to  Arch- 
angel. It  took  my  breath  away;  it  was  such  an 
unlikely  destination.  I  had  barely  heard  of  the  place 
before.  We  escorted  certain  ships  (the  ice-breakers,  I 
feel  sure)  to  Archangel,  accomplished  the  journey 
safely,  and  when  we  arrived  at  the  northern  port  of 
Russia  the  Russian  Government  made  us  presents,  the 
captain  three  hundred  roubles,  each  of  us  one  hundred 
roubles  and  each  of  the  men  thirty  roubles.  Yes,  they 
were  very  hospitable  to  us  also,  and  it  was  interesting 
to  see  the  life  of  Archangel,  but  we  were  all  crazy  to 

rejoin  the  fleet.     We  were  put  on  the  ill-fated  W 

and  were  wrecked,  taken  through  Norway,  and  put  on 
this  ship.  When  we  get  to  Newcastle  we  shall  find  new 
orders  awaiting  us.     I  hope  to  see  my  father  in  London. 


RETURNING  TO  ENGLAND  297 

I've  been  three  years  away  from  home,  and  no  one  has 
the  least  idea  where  I  am  or  whether  I  am  aUve  or 
dead." 

How  excited  everyone  was  when  at  last  we  entered 
British  waters,  and  the  officers  put  off  their  mixed 
British  and  Russian  attire  and  donned  their  uniforms 
of  blue  cloth  and  gilt  braid.  The  ship  hummed  with 
boyish  excitement.     At  Newcastle  all  the  kit  that  the 

men  had  saved  from  the  W was  brought  up  first, 

and  the  officers  and  men  went  off  before  any  of  the 
other  passengers.  The  orders  at  Newcastle  were  that 
they  should  travel  direct  to  London  and  report  them- 
selves at  the  Admiralty.  A  second  order  came  directing 
that  my  lieutenant  should  not  stay  at  London,  but 
should  go  direct  to  Portsmouth  and  take  with  him  the 
marines. 

I  found  him  in  the  train  from  Newcastle.  He  was 
appaUingly  excited  and  tired,  and  had  deep  black  circles 
below  his  eyes.  "Isn't  it  hard  luck?"  said  he.  "I 
haven't  seen  my  people  for  three  years,  and  now  I 
have  to  go  straight  on  to  Portsmouth.  I  was  so  pleased 
to  think  we  were  to  be  in  London  for  some  days. 
You  know  you  can  telephone  from  Newcastle  to  London. 
It  costs  three-and-sixpence,  but  isn't  it  a  miracle.  I 
rang  up  my  father.  Just  picked  up  the  receiver,  put 
it  to  my  ears,  and  called  into  the  tube :  '  Is  that  you, 
father?'  I  could  hear  the  old  man  gasp,  hear  the 
shuffle  of  his  feet.  ... 


298  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

"'Is  that  you,  my  son?' 

"'Yes,  I  am  at  Newcastle,  just  arrived,  and  am 
coming  to  London.  .  .  .' 

"What  a  sweet  moment  it  was!  And  then  I  had 
scarcely  put  the  receiver  back  again  on  its  hook  when 
I  was  handed  the  Admiralty  telegram  to  the  effect  that  I 
was  to  catch  the  5  a.m.  train  at  Waterloo,  and  not  let 
the  men  out  of  my  sight  till  they  were  safely  bestowed 
in  one  of  the  vessels  of  the  fleet.  We  have  to  keep  a 
sharp  eye  on  them,  they've  plenty  of  money  and  would 
be  off  drinking  if  they  got  a  chance.  ..." 

This,  perhaps,  gives  a  glimpse  of  the  life  of  the  de- 
fenders of  our  shores.  Someone  came  into  me  the  other 
evening  and  I  asked,  "What  news  is  there?" 

"Only  a  British  warship  sunk,"  was  the  reply. 
Only!  And  only  a  few  hundred  brave  and  loving  and 
patriotic  men  like  my  lieutenant  drowned,  men  with 
sweethearts  and  homes  and  an  undying  love  of  their 
country.  Let  us  remember  always  that  the  Empire  is  in 
the  hands  of  heroes. 


So  I  find  myself  in  London.  My  first  impression 
is  one  of  gloom.  Business  wishes  to  be  as  usual,  but 
cannot  quite  manage  it.  The  ragtimes  have  stopped ; 
the  barrel  organs  play  national  anthems  instead.  There 
is  not  so  much  laughter,  not  so  many  witticisms,  many 
more  serious  faces.    There  is  depression  owing  to  the 


RETURNING   TO   ENGLAND  299 

absence  of  news.*  Squads  of  mixed  sizes  of  recruits  go 
by  in  unwonted  looking  khaki  suits  and  the  passers-by 
give  no  cheers.  Darkness  at  night,  and  the  lurid  eyes 
of  the  searchlights  on  the  Thames. 

But  looking  further,  I  am  aware  of  a  great  optimism 
and  a  renewed  national  vigour.  The  people  who  can 
really  help  England  are  at  the  fore;  those  who  are 
frauds,  self-seekers,  mere  self- advertisers,  have  fallen  out. 
There  is  a  brisk  breeze  blowing  against  the  cobwebs 
of  lazy  habit.  Forces  are  beating  against  the  snobbism 
in  our  State  departments,  education,  social  life. 

Thousands  of  people  breathe  a  prayer  of  this  sort: 
"I  hope  the  war  won't  end  till  England  has  been 
thoroughly  wakened  up.  I  hope  the  war  won't  de- 
generate into  a  sort  of  triumphal  procession  for  us. 
I  only  hope  the  Germans  will  keep  their  end  up  till  we 
get  a  thorough  shaking-up." 

Everyone  sees  gain  ahead  for  England  if  only  the 
war  be  hard  enough  and  long  enough  for  us.  Yet  at 
the  same  time  it  seemed  strange  to  me  when  I  first 
came  back  to  hear  the  opinions  of  Londoners  :  — 

"It  all  depends  on  the  Russians.  We  are  waiting 
for  them." 


*  With  regard  to  the  policy  of  Censorship,  those  in  authority  should  re- 
member that  all  that  is  suppressed  now  will  burst  out  with  fury  when  the 
war  is  over,  or  when  some  great  disaster  breaks  down  the  Censorship. 
Out  will  come  the  scandals,  the  mistakes,  the  bitternesses,  all  intensified. 
That  is  why  there  is  depression  now ;  the  man  in  the  street  cannot  discharge 
his  feehngs  day  by  day. 


300  RUSSIA   AND   THE   WORLD 

''We  hold  them  on  the  Aisne;  we  shall  starve  them 
out." 

"It  is  money  will  tell  in  the  end;  we  shall  finish 
them  with  silver  bullets." 

To  which  opinions  I  necessarily  replied:  "The 
Russians  cannot  do  much  yet  on  German  soil.  War- 
saw is  going  to  be  in  danger  off  and  on  all  the  winter. 
Directly  the  Russians  begin  fighting  on  German  soil, 
they  are  up  against  German  science,  German  railways, 
German  technical  superiority.  The  Russians  have  a 
much  harder  task  than  French  and  English  on  the 
other  side.  You  must  depend  on  yourselves  if  you  are 
going  to  win  properly.  When  once  you  force  the  hands 
of  the  Germans  on  the  west,  Russia  will  follow  heavily 
in  the  east.  Everything  depends  on  prosecuting  the 
war  with  vigour. 

As  for  starving  the  Germans  out,  don't  believe  it. 
It  can't  be  done.  The  Germans,  with  their  extraor- 
dinary gift  for  organisation,  and  their  accuracy  and 
discipline,  will  easily  organise  their  internal  trade  and 
their  country  of  Germany  (including  conquered  Bel- 
gium) ;  and  they  can  Hve  in  a  state  of  war  for  a  whole 
era  like  the  Romans.  The  more  time  you  give  the 
Germans  the  more  difficult  it  will  be  to  crush  them. 
They  are  a  hard  people ;  there  is  little  give  in  them. 

And  as  for  winning  by  force  of  money,  that  is  a  poor 
foolish  materialism.  Nothing  can  be  won  by  money. 
It  is  almost  a  truism  to  say  that  men  fight  more  cour- 


RETURNING  TO   ENGLAND  301 

ageously  when  they  have  lost  everything.  The  more 
faith  in  money  we  have,  the  less  likely  are  we  to  endure 
to  the  end. 

A  few  weeks  after  I  had  returned,  the  absolute  re- 
liance upon  Russia  began  to  slacken,  and  a  good  new 
faith  began  to  appear,  faith  in  ourselves. 

"If  you  want  a  thing  well  done,  do  it  yourself, 
John ! "  and  England  began  to  prosecute  the  war  with 
increasing  energy,  both  on  land  and  on  sea.  News  of 
victory  in  Gahcia  was  received  thankfully,  but  was  not 
regarded  as  having  the  peculiar  significance  of  being 
likely  to  relieve  the  situation  on  the  Aisne.  I  began 
to  hear  the  true  whisper:  "We  could  beat  them  our- 
selves." 


Ill 

Not  Too  Loud 

Down  in  our  East  End  in  the  sweated  labour  dens, 
women  are  busy  making  flappers  and  squeakers  and 
tiddlers  and  feathers  and  what  not  for  the  celebration 
of  peace.  Even  German  Jews  are  engaged  in  the 
business  and  are  making  a  considerable  speculation 
upon  our  maf&cking  again.  If  peace  is  postponed  too 
long  then  these  wares  will  be  put  forth  on  the  occasion 
of  great  victories  or  the  German  evacuation  of  the 
Belgian  cities. 

There  will  be  room  to  be  joyful.  Our  populace 
will  want  to  shout  and  get  drunk  and  throw  confetti 
about  and  make  a  great  noise.  And  yet  I  hope  the 
noise  will  not  be  too  loud  and  that  those  of  us  who 
are  quiet-souled  will  not  be  too  much  upset  by  the 
clamour.  If  all  the  public-houses  and  off-license  places 
could  be  shut  for  a  week  during  the  peace  celebrations, 
or  on  days  when  we  rejoice  over  victory,  I  imagine  the 
noise  would  be  of  a  more  tolerable  quality.  Perhaps, 
however,  the  sweaters  in  the  East  End  are  making  a 
miscalculation.  We  shall  be  quiet  in  our  joy.  So 
many  more  of  us  this  time  will  have  lost  brothers  in 

302 


NOT  TOO  LOUD  303 

the  war,  so  many  families  will  have  the  remembrance 
of  great  sorrow,  and  England  will  be  in  black. 

Those  who  have  perished  will  also  rejoice  with  us  in 
the  victory  and  in  peace.  They  will  look  down  as  the 
stars  look  —  serenely.  A  verse  of  Alfred  Noyes  gives 
the  thought : 

"  When  the  last  post  sounds 

And  the  night  is  on  the  battlefield, 
Night  and  rest  at  last  from  all  the 

tumult  of  our  dreams, 
Will  it  not  be  well  with  us, 

Veterans,  veterans, 
If  with  duty  done  like  yours  we  lie  beneath 

the  stars." 

The  day  of  peace  is  one  when  every  man  should 
go  to  Holy  Communion  and  eat  and  drink  the  Bread 
and  Wine  of  those  who  have  suffered  and  died  for 
us  all,  and  so  enter  into  communion  with  their  spirits 
and  their  passion.  Do  not  let  them  die  or  think  that 
they  are  dead.     Find  them  again,  find  them  again ! 

We  are  accustomed  to  think  of  the  Germans  as  coarse 
and  brutal,  and  yet  we  may  upon  occasion  learn  tender- 
ness from  them.  One  of  the  most  touching  things  I 
remember  reading  of  the  Germans  was  the  way  the  news 
of  the  fall  of  Antwerp  was  received  in  one  of  their 
theatres.  A  political  play  called  "19 14"  was  being 
performed.  It  was  about  half-past  ten  at  night,  when 
suddenly  the  manager  came  on  to  the  stage,  interrupting 
the  players  and  the  orchestra,  and  crying  out : 


304  RUSSIA  AND   THE   WORLD 

''One  moment,  one  moment,  gentlemen;  Antwerp 
has  fallen." 

There  was  tremendous  excitement  among  the  audi- 
ence, the  waving  of  arms,  cheering,  shouting,  singing, 
the  singing  of  ''Deutschland  over  all"  and  ''The 
Watch  on  the  Rhine."  Then  suddenly  the  manager 
came  forward  again  and  imposed  silence  by  his  lifted 
hand.  Following  him  came  the  chorus  singing  in  a 
remonstrant  tone  this  beautiful  song : 

Nicht  zu  laut ! 

Nicht  zu  laut ! 
Denkt  g'rad  jetzt  wo  Ihr  jubelt  und  lacht ; 

Nicht  zu  laut ! 

Nicht  zu  laut ! 
Fiel  ein  krieger  vielleicht  in  der  Schlacht 
Und  er  liegt  beim  zerschossenen  Pf  erde 
Und  nimmt  abschied  von  Mutter  und  Braut  — 

Nicht  zu  laut ! 

Nicht  zu  laut ! 

which  may  be  read  in  English : 

Not  too  loud ! 

Not  too  loud ! 
Think  just  now  whilst  you  laugh  and  cheer ; 

Not  too  loud ! 

Not  too  loud ! 
How  out  on  the  battlefield  dark  and  drear 
A  soldier  lies  dying,  his  dead  steed  beside, 
And  bids  farewell  to  mother  and  bride  — 

Not  too  loud ! 

Not  too  loud ! 


NOT   TOO   LOUD  305 

Which  might  also  be  the  motto  of  our  remonstrance 
and  our  hope  in  the  noisy  hours  of  triumph.  Not  too 
loud!  There  in  the  dust  where  the  enemy  is  lying, 
but  for  the  grace  of  God  England  might  be  l3ang  too. 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America. 


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